Mentor Program

ACS launched its Mentor Program in 2009 and began its search for individuals who would advise and assist in the expansion and direction of the organization. Mentors would be invited to lend their individual expertise and experience to the benefit of ACS and would agree to make themselves accessible to the ACS Board as needs arose. Mentors could be accomplished, recognized artists; gallery directors; museum curators; business executives; or marketing specialists with an emphasis on art.

In late 2009, we added our first Mentor, collage artist John Morse. John came to our attention through a local gallery director. After some of our members attended his opening and lecture, John quickly became a friend to ACS. When invited to become our first Mentor, John readily accepted and pledged to help in any way he could with the growth and direction of our organization. ACS appreciates John’s generous spirit in sharing his knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm about collage and we look forward to John’s participation in our Mentor Program.

John Morse – represented by William Turner Gallery, Atlanta, GA

John Morse showed an early childhood interest in art and at age 11 began twice-weekly evening oil painting classes. He attended for four years and soon earned commissions creating portraits, landscapes and murals. From the age of 15 he worked as a sign painter, including interstate billboards. At 16, he left home and moved to the Oregon coast where he worked on poster arts and super-graphic murals. With the exception of two years of high school art class, he received no further formal art training.

In 1981 he moved to Barcelona, earning money selling his street scene watercolors. When funds for materials ran low, he often made collages from found papers, mostly litter. He then became art director at Diagonal, at the time the foremost art and culture magazine of Spain. While in Barcelona, he and fellow expatriate Brice Hammack formed Chi-Perro Studios, which created art from disposable plastic, including trash bags, grocery sacks and plastic wrap.

In 1982 Morse returned to America, and soon made New York City home. From 1984 to 1988, he produced A-R-T, a silent, 30-minute program on Manhattan Cable Television that each week presented a single screen image intended to convert the television into a sculptural box (the first episode offered the interior of an oven baking a chicken).

From 1986 to 1991, he served as a director of Socrates Sculpture Park, a five-acre park on the banks of the East River in New York City dedicated to the exhibition of monumental sculpture. It is now part of the city’s parks department.

His collage, drawings, watercolors, sculptures and installations have been exhibited at Kentler International Drawing Space, Brooklyn; Islip Art Museum, Islip, New York; and Match Fine Print, New York City. He is represented by Wm Turner gallery in Atlanta and Scoop Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina and currently also hangs at Silas Marder Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York, and R. Roberts Gallery in Jacksonville, Florida.

His work is in the private collections of, among others, sculptor Mark di Suvero; New York Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Kate Levin; New York Commissioner of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan; installation artist and sculptor Eve Sussman; Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love; and Jacques d’Amboise, founder of the National Dance Institute.

Morse and his partner, Ross Pedersen, have a home in East Atlanta Village and an apartment in New York’s East Village.