Hungry Eyeball interviews Portland Artist Justin “Scrappers” Morrison

I love Justin Morrison, many know him as Scrappers. You might find him painting up some food cart, building a set for a musical or see his ass on the cover of the Portland Mercury, Oct. 22 to 28, 2009. He seems to say yes to everything. He’s a hard working artist, art director, gallery owner, husband and dad.
I’ve known Justin for a few years now and I wanted him to reflect on some past landmarks and explain how they have shaped his art and life. Enjoy and thanks Justin!

> Growing up in California?
The whole time growing up in California (Burbank, Tujunga, and Palm Springs) I thought that I belonged in the Pacific Northwest. You see, that’s where I was born, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. My mom and dad had moved to a piece of land, where they built a log home and birthed me. Growing up, I heard stories about how that was the good life, I had a family then, I had family land, I had a dad, I even had brothers and a sister. So the whole time growing up in California, I planned to move to the NW and make up for all the wrong, that I felt had been done to my childhood. Of course, that’s how it influenced me “artistically”, I still love hiking into California’s wilderness and I miss all the friends and family I grew up with, but it’s kind of a bad place for people to live. Not enough natural resources to support such a big population.

> Living in Portland, Oregon?
Portland has been good to me and my wife Amy. We’ve always been able to find amazing jobs here, amazing friends, amazing co-workers, and the chance to make any dream a reality. We moved here from Arcata, CA (a small town in the redwoods), so Amy could work in the environmental non-profit industry (I don’t think industry is the right word). I didn’t really paint before moving here, I was a photography nerd in California. Amy and I made a lot of collage work and started selling our work for super cheap on the streets of Last Thursday and First Thursday. Somehow the art I made to sell, to nice people, on the streets sparked something that set off a wildfire and it continues to spread in the work I do today.

> How about Portland artist Janet Julian?
Janet is a major inspiration to most Portland artists who give a damn about being part of our community. She helped nurture a love of junk as an art supply inside me, she’s been a sister, a mother, a grandmother, and she hooked me up with my first art show. It was at the Star E. Rose on Alberta. She’s amazing and for some reason nobody ever gives her any credit for being a founding mother of Portland’s art scene.

> Portland art collective, Junk Town All-Stars?
If you go to a place often enough you’ll see the same people over and over again. I kept seeing the same artists over and over again selling on the streets with me. Some good, some crappy. I asked all the best if they wanted to work together on something. Junktown was a way that all us artists could continue to sell the work we sold on the streets though the rainy winter. We built pop-up walls and set them up at indoor music venues and bars. When I realized that Junktown wasn’t going to grow beyond that, I moved on. But all the artists who came together have stayed together and have
become friends who constantly encourage each other to keep up the good work.

> Portland’s downtown Oak Street including the independent book store Reading Frenzy, coffee shop Half & Half, and Independent Publishing Resource Center?
I like to think of that neighborhood as “the Acorn”. It’s kind of shaped that way from a bird’s eye view. All those business owners have let me make art for them (murals, zines, print ads, sandwich boards, beer coozys, zines, etc…) and all for trade, so I end up eating, reading and learning a lot there. It’s an important watering hole for my brain and spirit.

> Your good buddy Bwana Spoons?
I’m not sure if we’re good buddies, our families have never had dinner together, but we have stuffed burritos into our faces while we scrambled to get a show hung. I’ve always looked up to him as an artist and when he asked me if I wanted to team up on a gallery I jumped on the chance.

> The Grass Hut gang?
the Grass Hut gang is kind of a front, kind of make-believe and in the end totally real. When Bwana asked if I wanted to open a gallery inside his “Grass Hut Shop”, I said yes, well yes and…let’s move the studio from the back room to the front window and run the shop and gallery in the same room, let’s try to get the best artists in town to help us run the place and lets just call it Grass Hut. People think we are some kind of art collective, but that’s not true. It’s a business model and it works as long as everyone works for free, for something greater then themselves, to elevate the human conversation. Many other gallery/studio/shops have opened up in town since we started, and some even credit us for the idea. Over time though the Grass Hut gang has grown to more then just the 5 official members (Bwana, Apak, Scrappers, Le Merde and Martin Ontiveros), the Grass Hut gang is more like the people who come to all the opening, all the book releases, and all the random field trips. Shit, I would have to admit that the Grass Hut gang mostly exists online, in Flickr, in Facebook, in encouraging emails and stuff. It’s way bigger and more important then the 5 artists. But mostly it’s just an idea and one simple idea can mean different things to different people.

> Any other artists?
Yup, but honestly the local scene is getting weaker every month. As local press (the Mercury, WW, Port art blog and other visual art media ignore the work of our best artists, they end up moving to better towns to work in or their work ends up looking safe and sellable (do you really want to paint birds and trees for the rest of your life, really?).

> The Portland ad agency, *Wieden + Kennedy*?
The most talented, intense, and productive people in the world work for Dan + Dave. The other people there work for Wieden + Kennedy. That’s all I will say.

> Being the Art director at the Portland Mercury?
I’ve learned a lot about editorial design. They’ve also given me the chance to raise the visual standards (and lower them in some cases) to levels that i think are more Portland-centric. It’s awesome to help make the best zine in town and to beat the pants off the competition as the “underdog”. I also get to hire all the overlooked artists and photographers who live here. You wouldn’t believe how rewarding this work is!

> Your son, Camper?
I don’t want to do anything other than make his life amazing. I swear I would walk away from all this art shit in a heartbeat to spend more time with my son. I would rather build him a treefort then make 20 affordable paintings to sell in some friend’s gallery. But I’m working, making money, saving it up, and I’m going to buy some family land, and we’re going to live on it until I die. When I die Camper will bury me in the family land. He’ll plant a tree above me and his children and his children’s children will climb and swing in that tree. My son Camper has helped me realize why I work so hard.

If you want to ask anymore question take a look at the work I do at scrapperstown.com The work might be more interesting to people then my personal life and work history.

Thanks for the interest,
-Justin

Tags: APAK, apak studio, Bwana Spoons, grass hut, grass hut portland, janet julian, junk town all stars, junk town art, justin morrison, Le Merde, Martin Ontiveros, oregon portland, portland artist, portland mercury, Scrappers, scrappers interview, Scrappers morrison, Wieden + Kennedy

This entry was posted on October 28, 2009 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.