The Assemblages

Built from the bones of the mill town.

Pawtucket, Rhode Island: the Blackstone River and the factory smokestacks, the tenements of the Jewish immigrant neighborhood where he grew up, the emptying streets of the post-industrial years. Across six decades and every medium, Morris kept returning to the world he came from.

He painted it through a double lens; the place as he had known it and the place as it might yet be. The same eye that recorded the shuttered mills of a vanishing working class never read the spaces as fully lost. Where others saw the husks of post-industrial America, Morris saw raw material, and he spent his life making the case that a place could be remade through art.

Japonica

2005

Salvaged wood, acrylic

Woodbine — a colorful painted-wood cityscape assemblage by Morris Nathanson — WoodbineSalvaged painted wood

Yacht Club — a wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson built from salvaged crate wood, including a stenciled ‘Yacht Club Beverages’ panel and a carved boat — Yacht ClubSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBJECTS

Bottling Works — a salvaged-wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson incorporating a stenciled ‘Bottling Works’ crate panel — The Fish Returned to the Blackstone RiverSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBECTS

Golem — a dark carved-wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson with an articulated figure, work glove and iron pulley — GolemSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBJECTS

Carnival (2015) — a brightly painted three-panel wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson — Carnival Caribe2015 · SALVAGED PAINTED WOOD

A weathered salvaged-wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson with a paintbrush, iron fork and a row of pressed Christmas-tree molds — MacbethSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBJECTS

A salvaged-wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson built around an iron wheel, a carved panel and a toy cow — RajastanSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBJECTS

A carved-wood assemblage by Morris Nathanson with a bearded figure, a knight and a running horse — The Tragedy of HectorSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBJECTS

An assemblage of natural salvaged wood by Morris Nathanson incorporating a turned flute and a fragment of sheet music — The Magic FluteSALVAGED WOOD · FOUND OBJECTS