Banana meatloaf, a VHS of Pimps Up, Ho’s Down, and a good dose of Seinfeld—these are just a few of the items that provide daily inspiration for artist Morgan Blair’s work, which has recently been displayed in a solo show at The Ace Hotel and in mural form at Facebook’s new NYC office. A RISD illustration graduate and Massachusetts native, Blair carefully curates the best and most absurd cultural artifacts of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. As she showed us around her new home and studio in Ridgewood, we learned there is something romantic about her use of things past.
As a child, she mixed paint with sand, and would spend hours staring at the ladies in the grocery store airbrushing cakes. Both of these processes are present in her recent paintings today, along with her analog way of tracing designs onto canvases using an overhead projector. Lately, she's become obsessed with taking flip-phone photos of banana peels and gloves while biking around the city. These photos have abstractly made it into her compositions.
Her studio also shelters odd, discarded objects. There's the massive VHS collection, spanning over two walls, many of which never made it to the Internet let alone DVD. Blair even has a selection of strangers’ home wedding videos.
But even with all this nostalgia, Blair manages to create work that feels very contemporary, with rich vibrating colors and tightly rendered abstract patterned compositions. Below, we dicsuss pastel color themes, Magic Eye books, and how she ended up titling a painting Thirteen Year Old Watches Too Much MTV, Faints Cutting Strawberries At Indian Head Farm, Berlin, MA, 1999.
CECILIA SALAMA: When did you start collecting VHSes?
MORGAN BLAIR: My friend in high school worked at a video rental place and they’d sell the really terrible ones that no one wanted. So I took a few from that bin and I guess that’s how it all started. I go for dumb '80s and '90s movies and then anything that’s real weird.
Do you feel like the imagery from the '80s and '90s affects your work?
It’s kind of irresistible. Especially the pastel color schemes. Some of the graphic intros for these shows, like Saved by the Bell, they’re bananas! Crazy patterned shapes zooming past each other—every motif you can think of jammed into one intro. It’s inspiring.
Can you talk about your Seinfeld paintings? Why did you start doing them? Why did you choose oil over acrylic?
I started doing them because I felt stuck in my really tight and obsessive way of working. I wanted to loosen up and I think about Seinfeld a lot. I thought it would be funny to make earnest-looking oil paintings of stills from the show, characters, and scenes we've only seen in pixels with a laugh track. They’ve made it into my abstract paintings as well, where I try not to make them look like Seinfeld, but the shape of their hair styles always gives them away.
Do you have books that you draw inspiration from?
Most of my inspiration comes from VHSes. But I was really excited to get Be Bold with Bananas recently. The recipes and photos are absolutely insane. I can’t believe what they thought was good in the '70s.
How do you choose your color palette?
It's different for each piece. I'll often pick the first color at random. I usually end up using three or four colors, and I like when they
As a child, she mixed paint with sand, and would spend hours staring at the ladies in the grocery store airbrushing cakes. Both of these processes are present in her recent paintings today, along with her analog way of tracing designs onto canvases using an overhead projector. Lately, she's become obsessed with taking flip-phone photos of banana peels and gloves while biking around the city. These photos have abstractly made it into her compositions.
Her studio also shelters odd, discarded objects. There's the massive VHS collection, spanning over two walls, many of which never made it to the Internet let alone DVD. Blair even has a selection of strangers’ home wedding videos.
But even with all this nostalgia, Blair manages to create work that feels very contemporary, with rich vibrating colors and tightly rendered abstract patterned compositions. Below, we dicsuss pastel color themes, Magic Eye books, and how she ended up titling a painting Thirteen Year Old Watches Too Much MTV, Faints Cutting Strawberries At Indian Head Farm, Berlin, MA, 1999.
CECILIA SALAMA: When did you start collecting VHSes?
MORGAN BLAIR: My friend in high school worked at a video rental place and they’d sell the really terrible ones that no one wanted. So I took a few from that bin and I guess that’s how it all started. I go for dumb '80s and '90s movies and then anything that’s real weird.
Do you feel like the imagery from the '80s and '90s affects your work?
It’s kind of irresistible. Especially the pastel color schemes. Some of the graphic intros for these shows, like Saved by the Bell, they’re bananas! Crazy patterned shapes zooming past each other—every motif you can think of jammed into one intro. It’s inspiring.
Can you talk about your Seinfeld paintings? Why did you start doing them? Why did you choose oil over acrylic?
I started doing them because I felt stuck in my really tight and obsessive way of working. I wanted to loosen up and I think about Seinfeld a lot. I thought it would be funny to make earnest-looking oil paintings of stills from the show, characters, and scenes we've only seen in pixels with a laugh track. They’ve made it into my abstract paintings as well, where I try not to make them look like Seinfeld, but the shape of their hair styles always gives them away.
Do you have books that you draw inspiration from?
Most of my inspiration comes from VHSes. But I was really excited to get Be Bold with Bananas recently. The recipes and photos are absolutely insane. I can’t believe what they thought was good in the '70s.
How do you choose your color palette?
It's different for each piece. I'll often pick the first color at random. I usually end up using three or four colors, and I like when they