Time has eased Phil Morrison's pain and fear, but a humourous edge still cuts when he thinks back on things like the disintegration of his marriage and ensuing child custody struggle. When he won the chance to participate in The Alphabet Project and was assigned the letter L, the first word that came to mind was lawyer, followed by laugh. So he combined the two into a flourish of social commentary. The artist's main job, he thought, was to use image to symbolically have important conversations about our lives and times.
"After being dissatisfied with a court ruling that allowed for my lovely young daughter to be moved out of province, I began to ponder the idea of a 'higher court'," Morrison said. "I think anyone who has ever had to deal with family court will get a chuckle out of this piece. It's such a flawed system, and if you're ever in there, you see that so clearly. You have very little control over anything happening to you, so you have to laugh at it, make light of it. There have been a lot of positive changes in more recent years, but it's still a really backward, broken system and we have to keep hoping for more improvement. You have to talk about it, out in public, or it's not going to change."
This artwork is part of that conversation, but it is also making a statement about social commentary and satire itself. He consciously borrowed visual tones from the kings of political humour, the Monty Python comedy troupe.
"I pay homage to Terry Gilliam (the group's graphic artist) and the rest of the cast of Monty Python who taught me this most important insight: Don't forget to laugh at the absurdity of it all."
In doing so, Morrison stepped outside of his reputation zone. He is one of those artists in the region who come to The Alphabet Project with a significant public following already. He's one of the most famous sculptors in city history, with several high-profile pieces on the civic landscape (the high-slung canoe at Two Rivers Gallery Gift Shoppe, the white spirit bear with letters cut from the body, located on top of the Northland Dodge building, the cement figure wrapped in metal drier bodies at the back of Books & Company, etc.).
Flip through the below slideshow to view the Alphabet Project art and a link to each artist story:
What he is lesser known for is two-dimensional art. He wasn't trying to be confusing, he said, just true to the impressions as they burbled up in his imagination.
"You start at one point but you never know where you'll end up," he said. "That's what I like about art. It changes on the fly. It is full of happy accidents, unconscious materials, it all gets blown together and sometime it becomes incredible and sometimes it comes out lame. I thought I'd go for the laugh, in the end. If people get a chuckle, that'd be good. If people give some thought, that'd be good too.
"I was sure having fun with it: a little cut-and-paste, a little photoshop, a little mashup. I was having my own chuckles as I went, so it was a pleasure to do."
He advised young or aspiring artists to keep in close mind that it is supposed to be a pleasurable process. At least stay loose and relaxed as you go, and the undercurrents of the art will flow better.
"You have to be serious about the craft but you have to have fun with what you do with it," he said. "Be easygoing about what you're trying to say. Enjoy it. Let it be. Go forward."
But don't be afraid to look back and play with painful or angry feelings from the past. The bigger the feelings, the more relevant the topic. Loss plus learn equals life. You might as well laugh whenever you can.
