Works/Collection 01

The Mill Town

The world he came from.

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 those spaces as fully lost. Where others saw the husks of post-industrial America, Morris saw raw material — the geometry of a place that could be remade through art.

Bar Café by Morris Nathanson — a thickly painted blue-green street scene of a corner café and bar in a mill town, figures gathered below — The CornerOil on canvas

A tan-and-black mill-district cityscape by Morris Nathanson — saw-tooth factory roofs, a smokestack, tenement houses and a lone figure — The Millslinocut

Along the Blackstone River (1980) by Morris Nathanson — a black, white and kraft-paper collage of mill-town houses, a café, a diner and a factory — Along the Blackstone River1980 · Cut-paper collage

A black-and-white linocut by Morris Nathanson of a crowded harbor town, houses stacked around a setting sun and a small boat — Our TownLinocut

A newspaper-and-paint collage by Morris Nathanson on an ochre ground — three rows of simple houses above a line of cars — The NeighborhoodMixed media · acrylic

Japonica (2005) by Morris Nathanson — a brightly colored cityscape assemblage of salvaged painted wood — Japonica2005 · Painted Wood Assemblage

Woodbine by Morris Nathanson — a colorful painted-wood cityscape assemblage of houses, a bird, a truck and a dog — WoodbinePainted wood assemblage

Bottling Works by Morris Nathanson — a salvaged-wood assemblage incorporating a stenciled ‘Bottling Works’ crate panel — The Fish Returned to the BlackstoneWood Assemblage