Ree Morton: An Interview

Ree Morton (1936-77) was an American artist working with large-scale mixed media installations.  Her mature career was brief, extending from 1971 to 1977.  However, her output and growth during these years was unusually large.  This was the first of two interviews Lyn Blumenthal and Kate Horsfield conducted with Morton; the second was for the journal Heresies in 1977.

“You can see how I collect just junk — over there.  I have things around, and then as I work, it’s almost a kind of drawing process.  It involves picking something up, placing it over there, looking at it, putting something else with it, seeing how they relate to one another, bringing a third thing in, taking it out.  It’s really physical manipulation,” Morton says to Horsfield.

A historical interview originally recorded in 1974 and re-edited in 2007 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.