Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.” Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view from January 4 to February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice. DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition. Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people.
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon (pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.
Prina Shah, Unlock and Awaken, 2022, 25″x25″, paper, saree, bindis, block printing and acrylic on canvas
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 14 from 2pm to 4pm
Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.” Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view from January 4 to February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, DC space (52 O St NW #302).
Collage Artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Amber Robles-Gordon & Prina Shah
About Creating a New Whole
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice. DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition. Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people.
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon (pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.
About MICHAEL ANDREW BOOKER Michael Andrew Booker (b. USA) is a mixed media artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi who currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in Studio Art – Painting from Mississippi State University in 2008, and received his MFA in Studio Art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Art at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring.
Booker has been represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC since 2019.
About LISA MYERS BULMASH Lisa Myers Bulmash (b. USA) is a collage and book artist who works primarily in acrylics, paper and found objects. Informally trained, Myers Bulmash began her career making handmade cards. After her father’s death in 2006, the artist felt compelled to take more personal risks in her creative life. Questions of identity, trust and the imperfect memory now drive most of her work. The artist aims to nudge the viewer into recognizing our shared stories, especially those narratives that are usually experienced in isolation.
Myers Bulmash exhibits her work in group and solo shows throughout the Seattle metro area. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2020.
About LIZETTE CHIRRIME Lizette Chirrime (b. Mozambique) creates intricate fabric collages on canvas that are at once celebratory and soul-stirring, as the artist flirts between figuration and abstraction to develop a unique—and distinctly African—visual language. Stitching together printed fabrics, beads, and other familiar objects in Southern Africa, Chirrime transforms simple materials into autobiographical and narrative tableaux freighted with deeply felt emotion and patterns of meaning. Many of her collages center maternal figures and stories of African motherhood, honoring their millennia-long legacy of strength and grace and positing their representation as a symbolic device.
After receiving a three-month residency at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town in 2005, Chirrime spent the next 16 years of her practice in South Africa. In 2021, she made a return to her home country of Mozambique, where she now lives and continues to create.
She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2021.
About GA Gardner GA Gardner (b. Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) uses print media content to create an intimate viewpoint of his intercultural experience. Through the lens of his Caribbean heritage, he dissects, covers up, reveals, layers, and re-contextualizes the material in the print publications he uses, to construct pieces that specifically discuss issues of politics, race, culture, and identity.
The publications are a natural fit for Gardner, as they offer random vibrant color palettes, much like that of a typical Caribbean environment, and a great mixture of text and professionally photographed images. However the colors are universal and allow a conceptual approach to finding the common ground among all cultures. The artist combines these media depictions and information with natural paper and synthetic materials to aid in his message. By deconstructing the images into strips, or bits of torn paper, and assigning new overlays of unifying colors to the materials, Gardner erodes the original content at various levels often reducing them to shades with traces of random colors. The image that was once a bold headline new banner, or the newest eye catching product now struggles to be seen; muted, it now plays a secondary role to layers of paint and other mediums. The resulting serendipitous visual construction is an unsystematic reconfiguration and re-purposing to discuss culture, heritage and the symbolism of color.
He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2012.
About HIROMITSU KUROO Hiromitsu Kuroo (b. Japan) is a Japanese collage painter working in the tradition of origami. In his work, the canvas serves as the paper, and the gentle manipulation of its surface conveys intricate textural landscapes. The multiple layers of colors in his folded canvases are revealed by sanding the canvas surface. Interested in the juxtaposition and vitality of collaged pieces of canvas, he uses them to accentuate other emerging shapes in his compositions.
Kuroo earned both a BFA and MFA from Tohoku University of Art & Design and has had solo exhibitions at the New York based Tenri Cultural Institute, Gloria Kennedy Gallery, MIKIMOTO NY, Makari and Bronx Community College, as well as the Tokyo-based Gallery Yamaguchi and G-Art Gallery. He was awarded Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants in 2010 and 2019, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant in 2022 and the artist residency program for The Golden Foundation in 2019. In 2020, he was interviewed for Forbes Magazine. He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
About AMBER ROBLES-GORDON Amber Robles-Gordon (b. Puerto Rico) completed her Masters of Fine Arts from Howard University in November 2011, where she has received annual awards and accolades for her artwork. Her exhibitions and artwork has been reviewed and/or featured in many esteemed publications including the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, Huffington Post and Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora.
Robles-Gordon was commissioned to create temporary and permanent public art installations for numerous art fairs and agencies such as the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DCCAH; Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association (NVFAA); Humanities Council of Washington, D.C.; Howard University, James C. Porter Colloquium; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Washington Projects for the Arts; Salisbury University; Martha’s Table; DC Department of General Services and Democracy Fund.
Additionally, she has been commissioned to teach workshops, give commentary and present about her artwork by the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum; Luther College; WETA Television; Al Jazeera; WPFW 89.3 fm; WAMU | American University Radio; The Kojo Nnamdi Show; Howard University, James A. Porter Colloquium; David C. Driskell Center; the Phillips Collection; the African American Museum in Philadelphia; McDaniel College; Salisbury University; Harvey B. Gantt Center; American University and National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her solo exhibition, Successions: Traversing US Colonialism, curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, was hosted by the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in 2021. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2016.
About PRINA SHAH Prina Shah (b. Kenya) is a contemporary artist currently living in Nairobi, Kenya. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Shah also grew up partially in the U.K.; her artistic work embraces the indeterminacy of her national identity, including a fascination with the formation of selfhood as it relates to a specific cultural context. In a creative practice spanning mixed media—including sculpture, painting, glasswork and less traditional materials such as human hair—Shah’s art challenges the notions of individualized identity within a communal whole. Shah uses meditation as the impetus and foundation of her work, drawing the viewer into a personal narrative and inviting the participant to share in her visual journey of interconnection as she explores what it means to be one among many.
Shah’s work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions and has been acquired by the permanent collections of Finland’s Poikilo Kouvola Art Museum and the I&M Bank Collective in Kenya, as well as numerous private collections. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
About Morton Fine Art Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora.
Morton Fine Art founded the trademark *a pop-up project in 2010. *a pop-up project is MFA’s mobile gallery component which hosts temporary curated exhibitions nationally.
GA Gardner. So You, 2014. 42 x 65 in. Mixed media on mylar.
WASHINGTON, DC.-Morton Fine Art is presenting Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.” Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view until February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice. DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition. Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people.
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon (pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.
Michael Andrew Booker (b. USA) is a mixed media artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi who currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in Studio Art – Painting from Mississippi State University in 2008, and received his MFA in Studio Art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Art at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring.Booker has been represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC since 2019.
Lisa Myers Bulmash (b. USA) is a collage and book artist who works primarily in acrylics, paper and found objects. Informally trained, Myers Bulmash began her career making handmade cards. After her father’s death in 2006, the artist felt compelled to take more personal risks in her creative life. Questions of identity, trust and the imperfect memory now drive most of her work. The artist aims to nudge the viewer into recognizing our shared stories, especially those narratives that are usually experienced in isolation.Myers Bulmash exhibits her work in group and solo shows throughout the Seattle metro area. On the East Coast, Myers Bulmash has been represented by Morton Fine Art Gallery in Washington, DC since 2020.
Lizette Chirrime (b. Mozambique) creates intricate fabric collages on canvas that are at once celebratory and soul-stirring, as the artist flirts between figuration and abstraction to develop a unique—and distinctly African—visual language. Stitching together printed fabrics, beads, and other familiar objects in Southern Africa, Chirrime transforms simple materials into autobiographical and narrative tableaux freighted with deeply felt emotion and patterns of meaning. Many of her collages center maternal figures and stories of African motherhood, honoring their millennia-long legacy of strength and grace and positing their representation as a symbolic device.After receiving a three-month residency at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town in 2005, Chirrime spent the next 16 years of her practice in South Africa. In 2021, she made a return to her home country of Mozambique, where she now lives and continues to create.She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2021.
GA Gardner (b. 1969, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) uses print media content to create an intimate viewpoint of his intercultural experience. Through the lens of his Caribbean heritage, he dissects, covers up, reveals, layers, and re-contextualizes the material in the print publications he uses, to construct pieces that specifically discuss issues of politics, race, culture, and identity.The publications are a natural fit for Gardner, as they offer random vibrant color palettes, much like that of a typical Caribbean environment, and a great mixture of text and professionally photographed images. However the colors are universal and allow a conceptual approach to finding the common ground among all cultures. The artist combines these media depictions and information with natural paper and synthetic materials to aid in his message. By deconstructing the images into strips, or bits of torn paper, and assigning new overlays of unifying colors to the materials, Gardner erodes the original content at various levels often reducing them to shades with traces of random colors. The image that was once a bold headline new banner, or the newest eye catching product now struggles to be seen; muted, it now plays a secondary role to layers of paint and other mediums. The resulting serendipitous visual construction is an unsystematic reconfiguration and re-purposing to discuss culture, heritage and the symbolism of color.He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2012.
Hiromitsu Kuroo (b. Japan) is a Japanese collage painter working in the tradition of origami. In his work, the canvas serves as the paper, and the gentle manipulation of its surface conveys intricate textural landscapes. The multiple layers of colors in his folded canvases are revealed by sanding the canvas surface. Interested in the juxtaposition and vitality of collaged pieces of canvas, he uses them to accentuate other emerging shapes in his compositions.Kuroo earned both a BFA and MFA from Tohoku University of Art & Design and has had solo exhibitions at the New York based Tenri Cultural Institute, Gloria Kennedy Gallery, MIKIMOTO NY, Makari and Bronx Community College, as well as the Tokyo-based Gallery Yamaguchi and G-Art Gallery. He was awarded Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants in 2010 and 2019, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant in 2022 and the artist residency program for The Golden Foundation in 2019. In 2020, he was interviewed for Forbes Magazine. He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
Amber Robles-Gordon (b. Puerto Rico) completed her Masters of Fine Arts from Howard University in November 2011, where she has received annual awards and accolades for her artwork. Her exhibitions and artwork has been reviewed and/or featured in many esteemed publications including the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, Huffington Post and Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora.Robles-Gordon was commissioned to create temporary and permanent public art installations for numerous art fairs and agencies such as the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DCCAH; Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association (NVFAA); Humanities Council of Washington, D.C.; Howard University, James C. Porter Colloquium; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Washington Projects for the Arts; Salisbury University; Martha’s Table; DC Department of General Services and Democracy Fund.Additionally, she has been commissioned to teach workshops, give commentary and present about her artwork by the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum; Luther College; WETA Television; Al Jazeera; WPFW 89.3 fm; WAMU | American University Radio; The Kojo Nnamdi Show; Howard University, James A. Porter Colloquium; David C. Driskell Center; the Phillips Collection; the African American Museum in Philadelphia; McDaniel College; Salisbury University; Harvey B. Gantt Center; American University and National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her solo exhibition, Successions: Traversing US Colonialism, curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, was hosted by the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in 2021. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2016.
Prina Shah (b. 1973, Kenya) is a contemporary artist currently living in Nairobi, Kenya. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Shah also grew up partially in the U.K.; her artistic work embraces the indeterminacy of her national identity, including a fascination with the formation of selfhood as it relates to a specific cultural context. In a creative practice spanning mixed media—including sculpture, painting, glasswork and less traditional materials such as human hair—Shah’s art challenges the notions of individualized identity within a communal whole. Shah uses meditation as the impetus and foundation of her work, drawing the viewer into a personal narrative and inviting the participant to share in her visual journey of interconnection as she explores what it means to be one among many.Shah’s work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions and has been acquired by the permanent collections of Finland’s Poikilo Kouvola Art Museum and the I&M Bank Collective in Kenya, as well as numerous private collections. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
Seattle-based artist Liz Tran’s practice is an immersive exploration into the depths of the human psyche and imagination, making her work a feast for the eyes as much as it is for the soul. Tran’s adept use of colours, dots, circles, blots, and splashes is like looking into a kaleidoscope. You see something new, a provocative experience that challenges perspective every time you look.
Liz Tran
I have a childhood memory of taking the Rorschach test and it made a lasting impression. The inkblots in the test are ambiguous and open to interpretationLiz Tran
Her past exhibition, Matriarchs and Daughters Dream Oceans of Braille at Morton Fine Art in collaboration with Homme DC in December last year, was inspired by Tran’s memories of being administered Rorschach tests. A psychological evaluation of mental health and trauma through associative responses to inkblots. In this body of work, Tran transforms disparate monochromatic prints into a captivating narrative of technicolour panels, a testament to her artistic prowess. Tran’s work features in public collections that include the City of Seattle’s Portable Works Collection, Capital One, and Vulcan Inc.
In this interview, we learn more about the Seattle-based artist practice, creative process and more.
Q: Hi Liz, can you please introduce yourself? Can you share a little bit about your background and who you are as an artist?
Liz Tran: I emerged into the world on the hottest day of summer in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. I hold no memory of a time when creating was not a part of my life—Play-Doh sculptures and sand castle landscapes later morphed into massive paintings and installations.
Matriarchs and Daughters Dream Oceans of Braille installation view Courtesy Morton Fine Art. Photo credit: Jarrett Hendrix
Q: In some ways your art functions as a sort of anti- Rorschach or positive- Rorschach test, stripped of the pathological assessment that defined the original test. Can you speak into your appropriation of the form, how you came to the Rorschach test? The work in this series seems to operate on a number of levels, from colorful and invigorating to slyly subversive.
Liz Tran: I have a childhood memory of taking the Rorschach test and it made a lasting impression. The inkblots in the test are ambiguous and open to interpretation, which encourages viewers to consider their own subjectivity and how it influences their understanding of the art.
The Rorschach test has a long history and has been the subject of much debate and discussion within the field of psychology. By appropriating the form of the test, I’m exploring these themes and inviting viewers to approach it with an open mind, minus the intention of diagnosis, which, historically speaking, was often incorrect.
Liz Tran Baby Father, 2019 24 x 24 in. Mixed media on panel Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist
Q: Your work places generous emphasis on the self: self-knowledge, self-reflection, arguably self-care. How do you encourage and deepen these gestures to the self in a body of work that originates from a rather impersonal, profoundly analytical test?
Liz Tran: It’s true that the Rorschach test is often associated with psychological analysis and assessment, and it is typically administered by a trained evaluator in a clinical setting. However, the use of the Rorschach test in art can be a way to invite self-reflection and exploration of the self in a more personal and artistic context.
Liz Tran Mirror 11, 2020 12 x 12 in. Mixed media on panel Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist
Q: How do you view art? Buried in these works is the idea that there is no “correct way”to understand and engage with art. I’m interested in how you engage.
Liz Tran: I primarily engage with art and art making from the place of intuition and feeling, later taking into consideration the context of the artist’s intentions and the cultural and historical context in which it was created. Keeping in mind that there are many different ways to engage with art, it’s important to remember that there is no “right” or “wrong” way to do so.
Q: What are your thoughts about abstraction? Obviously, you work in this mode, but your art nevertheless seems to be critically alert to how we talk about and look at abstraction (art)?
Liz Tran: Abstraction can be a very effective way for artists to explore and express complex ideas and emotions, allowing for a wide range of interpretations by the viewer. It can also be a way for artists to challenge traditional notions of representation and encourage viewers to consider the art in a more open-ended and subjective way.
Heirloom, 2022 Mixed media fiber collage installation 198 x 53 in. Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist
Q: Heirloom has a delightful origin. Can you tell us the inspiration behind this piece, how long it took to complete, and its meaning? What was it like working with your mother on the piece?
Liz Tran: I have memories of sitting in church and staring at the oversized, colorful wall hangings in the otherwise monochromatic space. This imagery definitely played a part in creating my own, non-denominational textile.
Heirloom is a large wall hanging composed of various bodies of work and pieces of installations completed over the past decade. The binding is my matriarchal grandmother’s tablecloth, cut up and dyed with turmeric and the entire piece is sewn together by my mother. Heirloom serves as a marker of my career as an artist, while simultaneously serving as a tribute to the women who came before me.
Liz Tran Cosmic Circle 1, 2020 24 x 24 in.Mixed media on panel Courtesy Morton Fine Art and the artist
Q: What’s next for you as an artist?
Liz Tran: I’ll continue to follow my curiosity to worlds beyond explanation.
Len is a curator and writer at Art Plugged, a contemporary platform inspired by a passion for showcasing exceptional artists and their work he also studying an MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths London.
Creating A New Whole: A Group Exhibition of Collage Artwork Featuring Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Morton Fine Art January 4 to February 4, 2023 Morton’s Washington D.C. space (52 O St NW #302)
Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner,Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.”
Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view from January 4 to February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).
Prina Shah Untitled, 2022 25 x 25 in.Paper, sarees, bindis, block printing and acrylic on canvas
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice.
DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition.
Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people.
Lizette Chirrime The Boy Who Stopped the Snake, 2014 58 x 50 in. Fabric collage
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon (pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.
Exhibition opening : Saturday, January 14, 2023 from 2-4pm. Several artists will be in attendance. RSVP to info@mortonfineart.com
Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.” Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view from January 4 to February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice. DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition. Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people.
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon (pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.LEARN MORE
A Group Exhibition of Collage Artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah
Washington, D.C. – Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.” Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view from January 4 to February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).
Amber Robles-Gordon , The Temples of My Familiars: Identity Totem, 2019 23 x 17 in. Mixed media collage and found objects on canvas
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice. DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition. Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people.
Lisa Myers Bulmash, Not Geo – Sitting Man, 2021 12 x 9 in. Ink, hand-marbled and rice paper collage on watercolor paper
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon
(pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.
Lizette Chirrime, Synchronization in the Blood, 2022 38.50 x 60.50 in. Fabric and mixed media stitched on canvas
Morton Fine Art
Founded in 2010 in Washington D.C. by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African Diaspora.
Michael Andrew Booker (b. USA) is a mixed media artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi who currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in Studio Art – Painting from Mississippi State University in 2008, and received his MFA in Studio Art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Art at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring.
Booker has been represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC since 2019.
Lisa Myers Bulmash (b. USA) is a collage and book artist who works primarily in acrylics, paper and found objects. Informally trained, Myers Bulmash began her career making handmade cards. After her father’s death in 2006, the artist felt compelled to take more personal risks in her creative life. Questions of identity, trust and the imperfect memory now drive most of her work.
The artist aims to nudge the viewer into recognizing our shared stories, especially those narratives that are usually experienced in isolation.
Myers Bulmash exhibits her work in group and solo shows throughout the Seattle metro area. On the East Coast, Myers Bulmash has been represented by Morton Fine Art Gallery in Washington, DC since 2020.
Lizette Chirrime (b. Mozambique) creates intricate fabric collages on canvas that are at once celebratory and soul-stirring, as the artist flirts between figuration and abstraction to develop a
unique—and distinctly African—visual language. Stitching together printed fabrics, beads, and other familiar objects in Southern Africa, Chirrime transforms simple materials into autobiographical and narrative tableaux freighted with deeply felt emotion and patterns of meaning. Many of her collages center maternal figures and stories of African motherhood, honoring their millennia-long legacy of strength and grace and positing their representation as a symbolic device.
After receiving a three-month residency at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town in 2005, Chirrime spent the next 16 years of her practice in South Africa. In 2021, she made a return to her home country of Mozambique, where she now lives and continues to create.
She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2021.
GA Gardner (b. 1969, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) uses print media content to create an intimate viewpoint of his intercultural experience. Through the lens of his Caribbean heritage, he dissects, covers up, reveals, layers, and re-contextualizes the material in the print publications he uses, to construct pieces that specifically discuss issues of politics, race, culture, and identity.
The publications are a natural fit for Gardner, as they offer random vibrant color palettes, much like that of a typical Caribbean environment, and a great mixture of text and professionally photographed images. However the colors are universal and allow a conceptual approach to finding the common ground among all cultures. The artist combines these media depictions and information with natural paper and synthetic materials to aid in his message. By deconstructing the images into strips, or bits of torn paper, and assigning new overlays of unifying colors to the materials, Gardner erodes the original content at various levels often reducing them to shades with traces of random colors. The image that was once a bold headline new banner, or the newest eye catching product now struggles to be seen; muted, it now plays a secondary role to layers of paint and other mediums. The resulting serendipitous visual construction is an unsystematic reconfiguration and re-purposing to discuss culture, heritage and the symbolism of color.
He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2012.
Hiromitsu Kuroo (b. Japan) is a Japanese collage painter working in the tradition of origami. In his work, the canvas serves as the paper, and the gentle manipulation of its surface conveys intricate textural landscapes. The multiple layers of colors in his folded canvases are revealed by sanding the canvas surface. Interested in the juxtaposition and vitality of collaged pieces of canvas, he uses them to accentuate other emerging shapes in his compositions.
Kuroo earned both a BFA and MFA from Tohoku University of Art & Design and has had solo exhibitions at the New York based Tenri Cultural Institute, Gloria Kennedy Gallery, MIKIMOTO NY, Makari and Bronx Community College, as well as the Tokyo-based Gallery Yamaguchi and G-Art
Gallery. He was awarded Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants in 2010 and 2019, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant in 2022 and the artist residency program for The Golden Foundation in 2019. In 2020, he was interviewed for Forbes Magazine. He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
Amber Robles-Gordon (b. Puerto Rico) completed her Masters of Fine Arts from Howard University in November 2011, where she has received annual awards and accolades for her artwork. Her exhibitions and artwork has been reviewed and/or featured in many esteemed publications including the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, Huffington Post and Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora.
Robles-Gordon was commissioned to create temporary and permanent public art installations for numerous art fairs and agencies such as the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DCCAH; Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association (NVFAA); Humanities Council of Washington, D.C.; Howard University, James C. Porter Colloquium; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Washington Projects for the Arts; Salisbury University; Martha’s Table; DC Department of General Services and Democracy Fund.
Additionally, she has been commissioned to teach workshops, give commentary and present about her artwork by the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum; Luther College; WETA Television; Al Jazeera; WPFW 89.3 fm; WAMU | American University Radio; The Kojo Nnamdi Show; Howard University, James A. Porter Colloquium; David C. Driskell Center; the Phillips Collection; the African American Museum in Philadelphia; McDaniel College; Salisbury University; Harvey B. Gantt Center; American University and National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her solo exhibition, Successions: Traversing US Colonialism, curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, was hosted by the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in 2021. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2016.
Prina Shah (b. 1973, Kenya) is a contemporary artist currently living in Nairobi, Kenya. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Shah also grew up partially in the U.K.; her artistic work embraces the indeterminacy of her national identity, including a fascination with the formation of selhood as it relates to a specific cultural context. In a creative practice spanning mixed media—including sculpture, painting, glasswork and less traditional materials such as human hair—Shah’s art challenges the notions of individualized identity within a communal whole. Shah uses meditation as the impetus and foundation of her work, drawing the viewer into a personal narrative and inviting the participant to share in her visual journey of interconnection as she explores what it means to be one among many.
Shah’s work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions and has been acquired by the permanent collections of Finland’s Poikilo Kouvola Art Museum and the I&M Bank Collective in Kenya, as well as numerous private collections. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
Michael Andrew Booker. Sonder Gardens, 2022. 18 x 13 in. Fineliner pen, color pencil, fabric and collage on paper
Morton Fine Art is pleased to announce Creating a New Whole, a group exhibition of collage artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Amber Robles-Gordon and Prina Shah. Ranging in techniques, approaches and materials—from quilting, tapestry, fabric, paint and appropriated mass media—the artists in Creating a New Whole exemplify collage’s invitation to what Myers Bulmash has recognized as “a process of purposefully taking things out of context.” Constructing new contexts, forms and wholes, these artists’ practices are frequently as generative as much as they are reparative, seeking to draw connections to what was absent or ignored in their elements’ original context(s). Creating a New Whole, will be on view from January 4 to February 4, 2023 at Morton’s Washington, D.C. space (52 O St NW #302).
Creating a New Whole Collage Artwork by Michael Andrew Booker, Lisa Myers Bulmash, Lizette Chirrime, GA Gardner, Hiromitsu Kuroo, Amber Robles-Gordon & Prina Shah January 4th – February 4th, 2023
Opening reception 2-4pm on Saturday, January 14th, 2023.Several artists will be in attendance. Please RSVP to info@mortonfineart.com .
Contact the gallery for viewing by appointment, price list, additional information and acquisition. (202) 628-2787 (call or text) info@mortonfineart.com
PRINA SHAH, Unlock and Awaken, 2022, 25″x25″, paper, saree, bindis, block printing and acrylic on canvas
About Creating a New Whole
Continuing quilting techniques practiced by their respective ancestors, Booker, Chirrime, Gardner and Shah work with resonant materials that speak to the past while enabling the past to speak to the present. Kenya-based, Shah’s personally charged materials include paper, saree, bindis and block printing which she vividly combines using textures, colors and forms, the sum total creating new narratives and perspectives for her inner voice. DC-based Booker is influenced by the coded and colorful history of quilts, referencing them as sign markers, shields, portals and gateways to help secure safe passage to a parallel utopic, afro-futuristic community, what the artist has called “Afrotopia.” Intensely layering marks of fineliner pen, color pencil, collage and fabric, Booker conjures complex, multidimensional figurative works, his figures and forms cohereing together out of countless small acts.
MICHAEL ANDREW BOOKER, Sonder Gardens, 2022, 18″x13″, fineliner pen, color pencil, fabric and collage on paper
Mozambican artist Chirrime sources scrap materials from her environment and immediate communities, using fabric, burlap, rope, paint, beads, leather and more to produce dynamic collages that speak to African womanhood, and more broadly, the human condition. Slicing and collaging Western printed media, Trinidad and Tobago-based Gardner appropriates both content and practice, “creating false images and out-of-context narratives” that ironically and seductively mirror the Western world’s misrepresentation of people of color. Likewise taking a critical, redemptive eye to Western mass media, Myers Bulmash’s “Not Geo” series, a cutting play on National Geographic’s nickname, seeks to rehabilitate and restore to dignity the publication’s now notorious rendering of Africans and other non-Western people. LIZETTE CHIRRIME, Synchronization in the Blood, 2022, 38.5″x60.5″, fabric collage and mixed media stitched on canvas
GA GARDNER, Nothing is Out of Bounds, 2019, 24″”x36″, mixed media collage on paper
LISA MYERS BULMASH, Not Geo – Sitting Man, 2022, 12″x9″, ink, hand-marbled and rice paper collage on watercolor paper
Overall, a sense of construction charges the works in Creating a New Whole, whether that be the notion of renovating the present and past or extending out of the frame into sculptural dimensions. The latter can be seen in the sculptural geometric-like works of Robles-Gordon (pieces the artist recognizes as “temples, places of spiritual practice” and which reference her larger textile installations) and Kuroo, inspired by the tradition of origami in his native Japan, whose thickly layered applications of paint and canvas exist on the boundary between painting and three-dimensional art.
AMBER ROBLES-GORDON, The Temples of My Familiars: Lace, Marbles and Sacred Places Within, 2019, 24″X18″, mixed media collage on canvas
HIROMITSU KUROO, Pink & Ivory, 2021, 17″x14″, bleach, acrylic and textile collage on canvas
Abidingly constructive in spite of their rigorous interventions, the works in Creating a New Whole end up with more than they started with as a matter of process.
Michael Andrew Booker (b. USA) is a mixed media artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi who currently resides in Maryland. He received his BFA in Studio Art – Painting from Mississippi State University in 2008, and received his MFA in Studio Art from University of Maryland in 2012. He has exhibited in various galleries across Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC. His work has been acquired by the David C. Driskell Center in College Park, MD. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Art at Montgomery College Takoma Park/Silver Spring. Booker has been represented by Morton Fine Art in Washington, DC since 2019.
Lisa Myers Bulmash (b. USA) is a collage and book artist who works primarily in acrylics, paper and found objects. Informally trained, Myers Bulmash began her career making handmade cards. After her father’s death in 2006, the artist felt compelled to take more personal risks in her creative life. Questions of identity, trust and the imperfect memory now drive most of her work. The artist aims to nudge the viewer into recognizing our shared stories, especially those narratives that are usually experienced in isolation. Myers Bulmash exhibits her work in group and solo shows throughout the Seattle metro area. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2020.
Lizette Chirrime (b. Mozambique) creates intricate fabric collages on canvas that are at once celebratory and soul-stirring, as the artist flirts between figuration and abstraction to develop a unique—and distinctly African—visual language. Stitching together printed fabrics, beads, and other familiar objects in Southern Africa, Chirrime transforms simple materials into autobiographical and narrative tableaux freighted with deeply felt emotion and patterns of meaning. Many of her collages center maternal figures and stories of African motherhood, honoring their millennia-long legacy of strength and grace and positing their representation as a symbolic device. After receiving a three-month residency at Greatmore Studios in Cape Town in 2005, Chirrime spent the next 16 years of her practice in South Africa. In 2021, she made a return to her home country of Mozambique, where she now lives and continues to create.
She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2021.
GA Gardner (b. Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) uses print media content to create an intimate viewpoint of his intercultural experience. Through the lens of his Caribbean heritage, he dissects, covers up, reveals, layers, and re-contextualizes the material in the print publications he uses, to construct pieces that specifically discuss issues of politics, race, culture, and identity. The publications are a natural fit for Gardner, as they offer random vibrant color palettes, much like that of a typical Caribbean environment, and a great mixture of text and professionally photographed images. However the colors are universal and allow a conceptual approach to finding the common ground among all cultures. The artist combines these media depictions and information with natural paper and synthetic materials to aid in his message. By deconstructing the images into strips, or bits of torn paper, and assigning new overlays of unifying colors to the materials, Gardner erodes the original content at various levels often reducing them to shades with traces of random colors. The image that was once a bold headline new banner, or the newest eye catching product now struggles to be seen; muted, it now plays a secondary role to layers of paint and other mediums. The resulting serendipitous visual construction is an unsystematic reconfiguration and re-purposing to discuss culture, heritage and the symbolism of color.
He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2012.
Hiromitsu Kuroo (b. Japan) is a Japanese collage painter working in the tradition of origami. In his work, the canvas serves as the paper, and the gentle manipulation of its surface conveys intricate textural landscapes. The multiple layers of colors in his folded canvases are revealed by sanding the canvas surface. Interested in the juxtaposition and vitality of collaged pieces of canvas, he uses them to accentuate other emerging shapes in his compositions. Kuroo earned both a BFA and MFA from Tohoku University of Art & Design and has had solo exhibitions at the New York based Tenri Cultural Institute, Gloria Kennedy Gallery, MIKIMOTO NY, Makari and Bronx Community College, as well as the Tokyo-based Gallery Yamaguchi and G-Art Gallery. He was awarded Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants in 2010 and 2019, Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant in 2022 and the artist residency program for The Golden Foundation in 2019. In 2020, he was interviewed for Forbes Magazine. He has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
Amber Robles-Gordon (b. Puerto Rico) completed her Masters of Fine Arts from Howard University in November 2011, where she has received annual awards and accolades for her artwork. Her exhibitions and artwork has been reviewed and/or featured in many esteemed publications including the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, Huffington Post and Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora.
Robles-Gordon was commissioned to create temporary and permanent public art installations for numerous art fairs and agencies such as the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DCCAH; Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association (NVFAA); Humanities Council of Washington, D.C.; Howard University, James C. Porter Colloquium; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Washington Projects for the Arts; Salisbury University; Martha’s Table; DC Department of General Services and Democracy Fund.
Additionally, she has been commissioned to teach workshops, give commentary and present about her artwork by the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum; Luther College; WETA Television; Al Jazeera; WPFW 89.3 fm; WAMU | American University Radio; The Kojo Nnamdi Show; Howard University, James A. Porter Colloquium; David C. Driskell Center; the Phillips Collection; the African American Museum in Philadelphia; McDaniel College; Salisbury University; Harvey B. Gantt Center; American University and National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her solo exhibition, Successions: Traversing US Colonialism, curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, was hosted by the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in 2021. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2016.
Prina Shah (b. Kenya) is a contemporary artist currently living in Nairobi, Kenya. Born in Kenya to Indian parents, Shah also grew up partially in the U.K.; her artistic work embraces the indeterminacy of her national identity, including a fascination with the formation of selfhood as it relates to a specific cultural context. In a creative practice spanning mixed media—including sculpture, painting, glasswork and less traditional materials such as human hair—Shah’s art challenges the notions of individualized identity within a communal whole. Shah uses meditation as the impetus and foundation of her work, drawing the viewer into a personal narrative and inviting the participant to share in her visual journey of interconnection as she explores what it means to be one among many. Shah’s work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions and has been acquired by the permanent collections of Finland’s Poikilo Kouvola Art Museum and the I&M Bank Collective in Kenya, as well as numerous private collections. She has been represented by Morton Fine Art since 2022.
Founded in 2010 in Washington, DC by curator Amy Morton, Morton Fine Art (MFA) is a fine art gallery and curatorial group that collaborates with art collectors and visual artists to inspire fresh ways of acquiring contemporary art. Firmly committed to the belief that art collecting can be cultivated through an educational stance, MFA’s mission is to provide accessibility to museum-quality contemporary art through a combination of substantive exhibitions and a welcoming platform for dialogue and exchange of original voice. Morton Fine Art specializes in a stellar roster of nationally and internationally renowned artists as well as has an additional focus on artwork of the African and Global Diaspora.
Morton Fine Art founded the trademark *a pop-up project in 2010. *a pop-up project is MFA’s mobile gallery component which hosts temporary curated exhibitions nationally. Gallery hours: By appointment only.
Morton Fine Art, in collaboration with Homme DC, is pleased to present Matriarchs and Daughters Dream Oceans of Braille, an exhibition of polychromatic inkblot prints and Heirloom (2022), a new 17-foot wall-mounted installation, by artist Liz Tran. Matriarchs and Daughters Dream Oceans of Braille will be on view by appointment through January 6, 2023 at Homme DC’s Washington, D.C. space (2000 L ST NW).
Inspired by early memories of the artist being administered Rorschach tests — a psychological evaluation of mental health and trauma through associative responses to inkblots — Tran transforms and transports the familiar monochromatic prints into a world of vibrant, technicolor panels that explore the nature of viewer subjectivity. Featuring work from her Mirror and Cosmic Circle series, Matriarchs and Daughters Dream Oceans of Braille is an explosion of colorful dots, circles, blot, and splashes that accumulate on the panel and create a thickened impasto.
Heirloom, 2022 (Work in progress image) – Mixed media fiber collage installation, 198 x 53 in.Mirror 32, 2021 – 24 x 18 in. Mixed media on panel
CURATORIAL STATEMENT – by Amy Morton
Exuberant and cerebral, Liz Tran is nationally recognized and well-known in her home city of Seattle, Washington. Conjuring a world of vibrant, technicolor visions, she explores the nature of viewer subjectivity. A generous and open artist, her current solo exhibition, Matriarchs and Daughters Dream Oceans of Braille, feels like a gift of connection — almost a theme, this sort of connection continues the spirit of my gallery’s collaboration with Homme DC (in the exhibit’s presentation). This collaboration goes a step further in the form of Liz Tran’s spectacular installation piece Heirloom, which she lovingly completed with her mother.
17-feet long, Heirloom is composed of fabric drawn from her travels, memories and installations from around the world, including the curtains of a circus tent, an oversized fiber womb encased in a vintage trailer and a space suit onesie. The piece was sewn by her quilt-making mother, with whom Tran often collaborates. Tran’s work often places the self at the center, valuing self-knowledge and self-care. With Heirloom, Tran honors her mother and all the generations of women who came before her. Love and devotion seem to be at the center of Heirloom.
Cosmic Circle 1, 2020 – 24 x 24 in. Mixed media on panelBaby Father, 2019 – 24 x 24 in. Mixed media on panel
ARTIST STATEMENT – by Liz Tran
My maternal grandmother Joyce would be thrilled by the knowledge that my mother and I: dissected her pristine white tablecloth, stained it with turmeric and affixed it to my current installation, Heirloom. Like many grandmothers, Joyce was a little different. Meant for a lively life in the city, she managed to play the role of a farmer’s wife somewhat convincingly, but I often wonder what her story would have been like if she had been born into my generation. Her spirit’s foundational support of my beautifully unconventional life is forever present. I aim to make her proud, in my art and my life.
Mirror 5, 2020 – 27 x 54 in. Mixed media on panelMirror 8, 2020 – 54 x 27 in. Mixed media on panelCosmic Circle 3, 2020 – 24 x 24 in. Mixed media on panel
GA Gardner. So You, 2014. 42 x 65 in. Mixed media on mylar.
Morton Fine Art: curator's notes 