Design by Morgan Blair

Morgan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, Florida, California, Spain, and Germany. She holds a BFA in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design.
Influences include early to mid-1990s youth and pop culture, computer games and fashion; Magic Eye; Legos; puzzles; and feelings.
She is available for freelance work, private commissions, exhibition opportunities, collaborations, a bicycle ride, and most anything else so long as it is cool and/or fun. Feel free to contact her about any of the aforementioned topics, the purchase of original works, or just to say "hello."

Interview with Morgan Blair:

Hi Morgan, can you tell us a little bit about your background on yourself, where you come from and where and how you discovered your talents?

I grew up in a rural town in Massachusetts, and went to school and made friends a couple towns away, where my mom taught and the football team always won. During summers I worked on a farm in my hometown. After high school I went to Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, and after that I moved to Brooklyn in 2008. I discovered my talents one day in preschool when I accidentally drew Snoopy.

1. What is the most important aspect in your work? What is your obsession?

Patterns, maybe. What make me most happy are methodical, tedious, repetitive activities like painting in small interlocking shapes in a pattern. That meditative state combined with the gratification of experiencing the visual result is the most important part of making work, for me. Conceptually, I think I always feel compelled to make sure each piece expresses a sort of dry humor.

2. What´s your greatest achievement yet?

I´m not sure? I don´t feel as if it´s happened yet. That´s not the question though? okay it´s a 13´ x 10´ pixilated mural of Macaulay Culklin from scene in Home Alone. It took about four months and I can´t believe it really happened. It was the ultimate form of methodical, tedious filling in of pattern and the ultimate reward for me so far.

3. How do you create new designs? What programs and tools do you use for the creation of your designs?

I´ve waffled back and forth between sketching in a book and on paper, and coming up with compositions and patterns in Photoshop. I think ultimately I´ve been more successful sketching by hand, and it feels more "right". I like using graph paper, too, for making patterns and for sketching in general.

4. Where you do you get your inspiration from, what inspires you?

A lot of imagery and experiences from my childhood seem to have stuck with me, and continue to influence my aesthetic and what I like to think about and look at in general. My grandpa has always made these intricate wooden jigsaw puzzles, and I think the time I´ve spent hovering over and studying thousands of interlocking fragmented shapes and colors really solidified a love for vast fields of abstraction that can be tediously assembled to dizzying results. I also played a lot with Legos, which employ a lot of the same principles. The way I learned to create was by meditatively piecing together lots of little tiny colored parts until I had a mass of pattern. It´s fun to stare at fields of pattern, and so that´s what I´m usually trying to work towards. Magic eye, holographic paper, Where´s Waldo, Zubaz, Lite Brite, and Tetris all inspired me early on and have permanently shaped my thinking, probably.

In the last couple years I´ve been consciously drawing inspiration from design choices and themes from pop culture of the 80s and 90s. Certain VHS and record covers, graphics and fashion from music videos, and music itself all inspire the future-past world I image my work has come from, and inform a language and vocabulary I´ve been working on, and in.

Lately I´ve been trying to pare down that language to still include fields of pattern, but in the form of symbols and more simplified shapes and cryptic objects that suggest an idea or possible scenario rather than tell a specific story. In this respect, I´ve also been influenced by flags.

5. How do you find a balance between what you want, and what the customer wants? Have you ever made a job you don´t liked to do?

I´ve definitely made work I am disappointed with. But, I don´t put it on my website so that way no one can see it or ask me to do something like it again.

One thing that´s hard is that I get restless and uncomfortable if I feel I´m repeating something I´ve done before. If a client references a previous piece, I just have to find a way to do something new in addition to delivering the elements that they liked in the previous piece. If it´s really impossible to understand each other over the course of several correspondences, then I´ll usually air on the side of what I want to do. Then I´ve made a piece I´m proud of, even if they don´t like it.

6. What do you think is important for upcoming talents?

One thing I think you learn right away (hopefully) that´s super important is to make work on your own that you´re interested in, and not concern yourself so much with what will sell. It sounds sort of like a risky strategy if you´re freelancing and need to make money, but if you can do that and then show a body of work that excites you, then people will be seeing and hiring you to do work that you enjoy. If you just take any assignment that pays regardless of whether it´s something you like doing, you´ll just keep getting hired to do that same boring crap over and over.

7. What is your most important tool?

My brain? no wait, my scanner. My bike? Maybe eyes.

8. What is important for you in life?

Honesty, being honest about who you are. Also, having a staunch tolerance for cold weather. And, being familiar and comfortable in nature, and having an understanding of where we and our sustenance come from. Dirt is important, allowing yourself to be dirty is important. Sometimes I forget. Living in the city results in a different kind of dirtiness that I don´t very much appreciate. An important dream that I have for life is to live in the country. At that point I will probably wish I were living in the city.

9. What are your plans for the next years?

I´d like to be getting more work and more money so I can buy more socks and laundry detergent and shelves and stuff like that without agonizing over it. I´m not in the habit of thinking so far ahead, but I´d like to do more large-scale murals, and some public walls outdoors would be rad. Show in more galleries, meet more people, make more friends?have a vegetable garden!

Morgan's Network:

http://www.morganblair.com

Designs by Morgan Blair for THOKKTHOKK:

Other drawings and works by Morgan Blair: