Nate Morgan

Sculpture based performance in Antigua Guatemala using sawdust and dye.

Digital photographs composed from coyote tracking.

Spot Hunting

I’m out walking. Cold hard concrete is beneath my feet most of the way. The space I’m exploring today is a viaduct that cradles the Rouge River. It runs from Dearborn, Michigan all the way to the Detroit River where it spills out. It’s very calm and quiet as I get further from the main road and deeper down along the banks of this ditch. No one is around. I can see signs of others having been here--shells of fireworks, fishing lines, spray cans, fabric, a lighter, and much more depending on where I veer off. Today I went because I heard that coyotes wander this ditch. It seems to make sense. It cuts through a very long distance backing up to all sorts of fields, businesses, lots, stores, woods, etc. It is a perfect highway for coyotes. A perfect source for food I imagine. It’s perfect for maneuvering around areas that are typically populated during the day, and it offers an escape from them as well. This ditch is a refuge, and perfect for observing any visitors. Whenever I’ve seen a coyote it’s always a surprise, and always something I come back home and talk about. Today I didn’t see one. I rarely do. But today I came across something just as good, maybe even better. I found the evidence of one having been here. It’s a confounding piece of evidence too. It is scat. Poop. But in it is something very mysterious and provocative. Lodged in the poop, are the remains of some kind of red, black, yellow, and green fabric. It appears as if the coyote had devoured something with clothing. The digested remains of possibly a Pendleton are bound and twisted around grey and white hair. The coyote had definitely come in contact with something domestic. Something human. Made by the hands of Man and ingested by Coyote. For me this piece of scat represents so much more. It is not only evidence of contact, or rough contact to be precise, but it also represents a spot where two worlds touch, where two intersect. It binds the two worlds together, ultimately revealing what occurs on the other side.

Debris Hut built from inherited wood from 2 older generations of woodworkers, and insulated with sawdust.

Sounds: Black-capped chickadee sounding off when I arrive. Wind blowing. Very quiet, but the sound of the snow beneath my steps becomes very clear. It almost squeaks. The load rattles in the car. It’s wood that I got from my grandpa. He was moving out of the house he built, and into a place where he would have assistance if needed. He collected wood. There was always a project in the works, and when we cleaned out his workshop there was the skeleton of a grandfather clock in there. It had the brass clock mechanism and weights and was mounted in just the frame of what was to be the house for the clock. It never got finished and ended up sold for the parts. He gave me a lot of wood that day. I’d say, “whoa, this is beautiful... so rad” and he’d say, “you like it, take it”. I didn’t take that much. What I did take now rattles on its way to being dumped in a field. My car is packed full of what I had left after my first attempt. Half of my material got picked through in Detroit and most of the valuable material was swiped. That stuff was my Gramps, and then mine, now it was mine also. I’m realizing I could say that about all this material that I touch, or rather touches me, until moving on to it’s next encounter. Material always has history. If I can use that history to describe something, than that’s what I’ll do. I seek out the specificity in materials. I could use any bundle of wood to do this and it might do the same thing, but I’m not. I’m using a very specific bundle that speaks of an inheritance, something left over and given to me. Sawdust has presented me with an interesting struggle though. In it’s case, it’s not specific “dust”, its just dust in general. It’d be too easy to sand down something nice, like the piano I got from that same move, and turn it to dust. This is not what I’m after here. Sawdust is my inheritance from two prior generations of woodworkers. However, no one really cares about dust, just me. I’ve come to terms with that, and it’s an honest contention with a material on my end anyways. I’m not trying to be relevant, I’m just trying to dig deeper. I’ve decided to introduce a small sacrifice to sawdust and use it for shelter & insulation. From my perspective this allows a material such as sawdust, with which I have an emotional connection, to raise questions about the state in which I leave something for a future generation to deal with. This scenario also places sawdust as a material to depend on rather than neglect. My dad collected wood for a long time as well. This material has proven in some ways to be burdensome. I’m in the middle of getting rid of all of mine. It’s functioning as a shelter, buried and insulated with sawdust, first for me and then most likely a future den for some animal.

Video work featuring the sculpture “Rough Contact” (the ball).

Inside this ball is some thing. This thing is protected. It’s also supposed to keep me from harm. I asked my dad to think for a little while about what he would give me that would keep me from harm. It took him just a little while before he knew what he wanted to give me. He said he had to make it and it would take a couple days to get it. After he was done, he concealed its identity and whatever he had chosen was placed inside the center of this ball. “Remember that the father here hopes to keep his son from all harm.”(Hyde 26) The problem now is that in order to get to this other “thing” protected in the ball, you have to confront the world and submit the ball and yourself to the potential of harm.

Breaks This World is a video performance that represents the actions leading to the current state of the sculpture Rough Contact. It speaks of being a maker and destroyer, giver and negator. The projected image ends up feeling metaphorical. In it a body comes and goes, appears free at times, and trapped at others. There is risk of injury and it calls attention to gravity. Both the person and the ball are in very close physical contact with the surface that supports them. The video carries tension by portraying simultaneously someone trying to break into something (the ball) and break out of something (the world).

I created a ball. It’s nothing too spectacular, just a ball. It’s about the size of a normal schoolyard sized bounce ball, or a basketball or something like it. The difference is that it is very heavy, which makes it more like a medicine ball. It’s made from many different kinds of sawdust, sand, dye, lead, and a urethane rubber similar to what skateboard wheels are made of. Or like the sole of a shoe. I wanted this ball to function as a chew toy for the world. It would be activated out in the world, and through this activity slowly worn down. I was imagining the world as a type of shape shifter. It’s a mysterious and potentially harmful creature. It is constantly transforming itself and it’s inhabitants. The ball acts as a vehicle in one sense. Once I decided that I could use a ball as a vehicle to experience the world, I found that following this idea, or chasing this object helped me find and experience new terrain. When I play with the ball out in the streets or in the woods, it misbehaves. The ball runs and appears to have a mind of its own, or it just seems to get tossed and flung around by the environment in the same way I am throwing it around. This method of play or engagement in the world is a bit ridiculous. When I roll it, or activate it, I end up following and chasing it. It leads me along. This game gives me license to go anywhere it rolls. While feeling that the world is in a constant state of devouring and deciding it would be nice to play with it in a way you play tug of war with a sock, it seemed very obvious that I would be putting myself “out there” as well. Informed in part by Gabriel Orozco’s “yielding stone”, in which the artist rolled a ball of plastecine equal to his own body weight around New York City streets. The ball I made is self reflective in another way. With no likeness or bearing on me in physical mass but instead a critique of the idea that a person could be solely understood through the material mass they occupy, my ball calls attention to the emotional and material imprint left behind. In this sense, the ball represents a number of materials that have left a significant impression on me— like sawdust and sand. This ball reflects a person traveling and moving through this planet, crossing landscapes and brushing surfaces all the while leaving a trail of activity and wounds suffered along the way. There is no functional need for this play and wandering around. The ultimate goal would be to wear the ball away, or at the least, to its center. Inside this ball is some thing. This thing is protected. It’s also supposed to keep me from harm. I asked my dad to think for a little while about what he would give me that would keep me from harm. It took him just a little while before he knew what he wanted to give me. He said he had to make it and it would take a couple days to get it. After he was done, he concealed its identity and whatever he had chosen was placed inside the center of this ball. “Remember that the father here hopes to keep his son from all harm.”(Hyde 26) The problem now is that in order to get to this other “thing” protected in the ball, you have to confront the world and submit the ball and yourself to the potential of harm.

This page is dedicated to objects related to the tracking excursions I went on around Detroit MI in search of coyotes, and objects that they encountered.

Sharpened Feet

Every step is a bite. Every movement, gentle or rough is a clenching and grinding between surfaces. I look down at my shirt where it covers my stomach. It expands and contracts as my breathing pushes and releases the fabric. The friction is almost unnoticeable, but I know it’s there. Occasionally I’ll shift my body, or take a deeper breath and the fabric covering my skin becomes more apparent. I feel it move. My awareness of this fabric moving is alarming. If I can feel it, I know it’s being torn apart. This contact between my stomach and the shirt draped over it is slowly and quietly violating the material. Breathing, a necessary movement, that all other movements are dependent on, tears apart the clothing that covers me (shelters me). This doesn’t happen in a discernable frame of time. I cannot watch it transform, only notice the traces along the way. A thinning area, translucent, and exposing. Holes. Loose threads. A tear. Skin showing through. Moving down the body. The shoelace that holds up my pants sways back and forth. I walk, work, and play. It continues to swing. It swipes at the thigh of my pants, its small plastic tip taps my leg. The lace was white and new, bright and clean, until it joined my body to come along for a ride. Now dull, grey, and frayed it patiently waits to break and release my pants to the floor to trip me. Cruel. I should’ve left it alone. For the feet, a rubber sole is supposed to be a cushion. It feels that way, is sold to me that way, and is a shield for a bit. It seems to work. Better it wear away than my actual foot. This rubber is soft though, and gets pierced by stones, glass, metal shavings, sand stuck in the tread, gum, and all types of other things. The rubber clenches and carries for a while. Some of these foreign bodies scratch and carve underfoot and the weight of the body and the moving of the limbs mark the terrain that is traveled. Every step is a bite. I chew and demolish the ground that supports me, and the dust “gradually coats the city, quieting its noise”. (Olalquiaga 34) My skin calluses, rubs off, the gums recede, and a tooth falls out. The old thing, the byproduct, the worn thread, are all scratches from movement, and it appears I’m better at breaking things.

This text describes a project that resulted from a series of conversations between myself and an artist named Masimba Hwati, who resides in Harare, Zimbabwe. We were partnered through the Zimbabwe Cultural Center of Detroit to create designs for t-shirts based on each other's places of residence. Our communication was limited to emails, and the objective was to develop artwork for the other person's hometown without ever having been there. Later, Masimba and I collaborated through some material exchanges. We had a mutual friend smuggle some raw clay disguised as cultural artifacts back and forth to each other. This way, we were able to work with the actual ground that the other person lived on.

The sketch archive is a collection of drawings from a series of sketchbooks. Some are related to other projects, some work through conceptual frameworks, and some are what they are. I enjoy the experience of going back through sketchbooks as a type of exhibition space. So this is a little taste!