This Phoenix artist sees the beauty in gathering the masses to create a single work of art

Phoenix textile artist Ann Morton’s projects are often collaborative — she brings in the public to create art on a mass scale. She’s recruited thousands of makers to create 13,500 red and blue squares to send to every member of Congress as part of “The Violet Protest.” She’s gathered the community to create art out of recyclable trash to honor the workers at the city’s public works facility.

Her latest project is no different.

Toward 2050 is recruiting makers now to create about 5,000 textile squares that will be put into a labyrinth at the Desert Botanical Garden next year. Why 2050? It’s humanity’s target to achieve net zero emissions and stave off the worst effects of climate change. The gardens wanted her to highlight conservation.

Morton joined The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation

ANN MORTON: The Desert Botanical Garden approached me to do a public-based project, like I’ve done before.

So, they have this space that’s called the Sunset Plaza, that’s for special events there and it’s big and round and I started thinking about labyrinths, and I thought that that would be a great vehicle for people to just contemplate. Because, you know, we have our busy lives where we care, but sometimes we don’t stop and think about, you know, really the seriousness of climate change.

And so the way that it will manifest is that there’ll be a call for all these makers to make flags, like, prayer flags in a way and those flags will be strong to define the paths of the labyrinth. But in those paths, there’ll be thresholds that start from 2025 when the project opens. And, as you walk through the labyrinth, it goes year by year all the way to the center, which will be 2050.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, because 2050 is not an arbitrary date here.

MORTON: No, no, a lot of my research for the project really stems from the IPCC report, which is the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s, you know, really eye opening, read to see how much time we have left so that we try our best to keep under 1.5°C climate increase from the industrial age.

GILGER: So, this is interactive. It’s collaborative and it’s really, you know about something bigger than all of us. But you always bring in people to help you make these things, right? And you’ve got some of them here, some flags that are already made and a lot of people who have already committed to doing this thousands, right?

MORTON: Yes, there’s actually about 3000 flags but they’re double-sided. So, actually it’s a little trick but there’s really about 6000 flags being made, the majority, of course will be in the labyrinth. But there’ll also be some flags, throughout the garden that kind of our way finding to, to the site.

So, yes, definitely, I certainly couldn’t do this alone. So, part of my art is kind of thinking of these platforms within which people can participate and really have their own agency to express themselves but be a part of a kind of an organized whole.

GILGER:  Yeah, I wonder what that experience is like for people you’ve done projects like this before. You were in the studio with me years ago and we made a square of blue and red for the Violet Protest project. We had an ironing board in here.

MORTON: That was fun.GILGER: It was fun. But I wonder, I’m sure you’ve talked to a lot of these makers in these projects before and people do it again and again for you, what did they say about why they want to participate? Like what it means to them to be part of something that becomes really, really big?

MORTON: Yes. Well, you know, each project has a different message. Of course, the Violet Protest was all about the political divisiveness in our country. And that particular project happened during COVID, unbeknownst to me at the time it started.

So for that project, people, it just, they found a way to be a part of something larger. And that’s really common to all the projects in this one because climate change overwhelms us all. We all feel like it’s such a big problem.

And so, of course, this project won’t necessarily solve those problems. But, the more that we are aware, the more that we let our policymakers, our lawmakers know that we are aware and we demand that policy be written into every facet of government that addresses climate change, the more that we can help.

GILGER: So it’s about taking the small and making it something much more impactful?

MORTON: Right. You know, in fiber arts, which is how all my projects center around textiles. There’s a term called accretion, you know, if you’re knitting or you’re weaving or you’re just embroidering, it’s one stitch after another, you know, that that finally becomes something. And so that idea of accretion really comes to play using all these wonderful people who are getting together, making something and having it come together for a larger whole.

GILGER: OK. So describe these you have here because they’re really beautiful.

MORTON: Yeah.Well, these particular flags, I grabbed them on the way here because they’re so they just came in this week from a local maker, Lisa Marusak and they are all about saving our pollinators.

So she’s used what looks like drop claws or canvas, but she has just various beautiful flowers that she’s painted but sewn over and then she’s used, for those of you out there that know where the French knot is, she’s used thousands of knots to make these.

Here’s one and the word save our pollinators. And they’re just beautiful, beautifully done. But, you know, every flag that comes in has someone’s mark on it, their own technique, what they like to do. Some are quilted, some are embroidered, some are applique, they’re just like collages of fabric. There’s a lot of painting in this particular project with fabric paint.

So it just depends on what the maker does in their own practice and they contribute a little bit of that to, to this project.

GILGER: Yeah. So, I mean, are you making some for this? What are you making?

MORTON: Well, you know, I took recently took some natural dye workshop online, and so I have all this naturally dyed fabric. So I’ve, I’ve done one where I’ve pieced it together like a landscape. I have one that’s just more abstract. There’s some daisies painted on one fabric. And so I’ve taken other fabrics and mixed with it.

I’ve been doing some eco printing where you take actual leaves and wind them up in the fabric and the leaf actually prints onto the fabric. So, I’m using some of those fabrics in some of my flags.

GILGER: That’s amazing. So, I mean, there’s a, you mentioned the labyrinth and how this kind of culminates at the botanical garden. But there’s, there’s more than that too, like there’s postcards you brought in here. And after the installations, you’re turning these into blankets, right?

MORTON: That’s right. Yes. So for every flag, the maker gets a postcard that they then in turn can send to their own lawmakers wherever they are. Then once the labyrinth is de-installed at the garden, there will be a actually a workspace there, at the garden, over the summer, where there and also remotely makers will make blankets out of these blocks, waiting to be donated to the next community that’s suffering from a climate catastrophe.

GILGER: But this really is, and I always think this is what’s interesting about your work. Like this is really like turning art and community into a form of activism in a way that feels more concrete than a lot of art does.

MORTON: Yes, I always felt like for some reason that my work would need to be a way to advocate. It’s just what I wanted to do. I wanted to do more than just be in a gallery. I have my share of gallery shows and I love that, but I love the idea of giving a lot of people their own agency to work within a framework that’s organized and comes out into another form that then other people can enjoy. So it’s, it’s been, it’s been fun to figure out these projects and how they work.

GILGER: They do work in very complicated and abstract ways all at the same time.