Today we’d like to introduce you to Ethan Murrow.
Ethan, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I was born in 1975 in Massachusetts but that was only because fathers were not allowed in the delivery room in southern Vermont. I was quickly whisked back across the border to the farm I grew up on in Marlboro Vermont. It is a tiny town, 500 people in a busy year. It used to have a store, now it just has a post office. Our agricultural operation was really more of a hobby farm but my seminal childhood experiences were all outside, with my family, working. This involved everything from tending to animals, logging, haying, plowing, sugaring and so on. My projects often focus on issues of labor, landscape, and environment and this all comes from these early childhood experiences. Looking back, I loved the way I was raised but always craved a life in urban environments and as a teenager, I couldn’t escape fast enough and worked in Mexico and Ecuador, New Mexico and Colorado before finally deciding to buckle down and go to college. After studying at Carleton College I began my career back in Vermont, building a small studio in my brother’s garage in Burlington and like so many creative professionals, juggling food service work with my art practice. After Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I started teaching and found myself stuck in the woods in Appalachia, with a good job in a place that looked just like the woods I had tried to escape as a kid. I panicked! So, against the advice of many of my mentors, I quit and did a series of residencies around the world, building up too much debt but meeting friends and making connections that resulted in many of the biggest advances in my career. I currently live with my family in Jamaica Plain, work in a studio in the South End and teach at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, where I am Chair of Painting and Drawing.
I currently teach at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Tufts University, where I am chair of Painting and Drawing.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
As a young whippersnapper, I bounced around a lot, working and studying all over the world but really found my creative legs when I lived in Seattle. In the Northwest, I started crafting stories about ideas of manifest destiny and absurd tales of misinformed and foolish explorers. These pieces first manifested as videos done in collaboration with my wife, the artist Vita Murrow, and then in drawings as I began to articulate projects that functioned like glorified storyboards for films. We then made a short film, “Dust” which was in the NY film festival and continue to build projects together in the publishing, film and video realm. In my own solo studio practice, I move between large scale site-specific wall drawings and works on paper. My projects grow out of research and reflection on folktales and history, especially as that pertains to narratives of colonialism, westward expansion, the American dream and the struggles between humans and their surrounding ecologies. They are intended to be absurd dramas that often put me front and center as the protagonist idiot, bumbling through the landscape or striving to achieve grand goals with limited success. My wall drawings are achieved with the help of many assistants and they are a true joy in part because of the social, collaborative and very public efforts that go into them. As temporary pieces, they are intended to negotiate the complexities of their architectural surroundings and instigate discussions with the spaces and communities they sit in, often about local history.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
Unfortunately, the world has often been ruled by despots, idiots and power hungry egomaniacs so while I am pretty horrified by our current state of affairs, it also doesn’t seem that unique but rather sadly familiar. Artists have often been at the forefront of recognizing inequality and activating political and cultural conversations. In that sense, I don’t think the role of artists has changed that much. The work looks and sounds different and the issues change somewhat, but we are still stuck in the strange balancing act where artists usually have to build relationships between commerce, institutions and areas of free speech and activism to move their work forward. It seems it is hard to have one without the others. Throughout all of this history, I see the same tale of white men and men in general behaving badly, persecuting others and generally profiting off of the backs of those around them. This is one of the primary reasons I have continually returned to stories that make fun of white male protagonists (such as myself) and mull their dogged pursuit of glory and success at all costs. I try to make fun of these same bad actors whenever I can because life is too short and precious to moan and groan all the way through. These issues have also impacted the way I craft my projects, as I have turned more and more to wall drawing because it has different outcomes for collecting, preservation and public engagement.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My work is currently on view at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH. https://currier.org/ethan-murrow-hauling/ “Hauling,” is inspired by the history of the Manchester region and its people, emphasizing labor and collaboration. The exhibition includes two large-scale works on paper and a 52-foot-long scroll drawing animated by a kinetic sculpture. I also have a show that just opened in Hong Kong at Duddell’s an arts exhibition space, library, and traditional Cantonese restaurant. This unique venue invited me to build wall drawings in reaction to ceramic antiquities from the Claire and Francis Heritage Lane Collection, Songyin Ge Collection, and Wui Po Kok Collection. https://duddells.co/art/main/en/#pop2 I also have solo shows coming up in February at La Galerie Particulière in Paris and in May at Winston Wachter Fine Art in New York City http://www.lagalerieparticuliere.com/en/artistes/presentation/8990/ethan-murrow
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bigpaperairplane.com
- Instagram: murrowethan
- Facebook: Ethan Murrow
- Other: https://currier.org/ethan-murrow-hauling/
Image Credit:
All photography: Clements Photo
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