Statement (2022)
My fascination with non-linear patterns in nature drives my work. I consider how our relationship to nature is mediated both by our objective understanding and our subjective imagining of it. I think of how wonder is important to our connection to the world.
Drawing, in its immediacy and intimacy, allows me to go beyond trying to render or "copy" things I observe. Drawing allows me empathize and imagine a narrative or event that I wouldn't be able to witness otherwise. Bridging the gap between what I know and what I feel, the transparency in the making of a drawing is a way to understand my imagined relationship to nature. Automatic and repetitive, my drawing practice engages with letting small decisions and chance affect the outcome of my work.
After experiencing a historic blizzard, I began making drawings based on snow crystals and their intricate structures. Snowflakes are not symmetrical; they are smushed together or broken apart by the time they fall to the earth. Perfect snow crystals are rare. I learned this as I grappled with the grief of having chronic illnesses, and snow crystals became a metaphor for the body. A perfectly functioning body is equally rare. Flaws and mistakes became central to the drawings, as I embraced them rather than abandoning them.
Imagining different registers of time—the beginning bloom of snow crystals within clouds, the fall in a storm, and the aftermath—I gather up microscopic and macroscopic relationships in my drawings. I think of how these things affect and depend on each other-- things break but the breaking creates new growth. Complex patterns and relationships give rise to the unexpected, catalyzing the viewer into a state of wonder. I find that wonder is a salve to grief, depression, and worry. Wonder allows you to wander elsewhere.
Words have recently tucked themselves into the elbows of lines and secreted among passages in my drawings. I began a dedicated sketchbook practice during the pandemic, I noticed a pattern of words that formed reassuring and bewildering phrases. Finding acceptance for what cannot change is a huge labor, and one that I seldom succeed at doing well. The words are the things I want the most, behind each leaf, cluster of raindrops, bit of frost—growing bolder.
Although my work is shaped by my recent personal hurdles, my interest in nature and looking spans years. Learning about nature is difficult in this time of endless ecological problems and drastic climate change. Looking deeply and being immersed in details de-centers the self and becomes restorative. My work is a search for connection through wonder.
Bio
Morejohn grew up in rural Oregon, and currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. In 2011 she earned a BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Oregon. Her intricate drawings are a part of numerous private collections, and in the permanent collections at Montefiore Medical Center (Bronx, NY), Physics Department at the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), and Project Art & Medical Museum, University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (Iowa City, IA). Her work has been exhibited at Bryant Street Gallery (Palo Alto, CA), Empty Set Gallery (Bronx, NY), Kenise Barnes Fine Art (Larchmont, NY), Collar Works (Troy, NY), The Drawing Rooms (Jersey City, NJ), and Schema Projects (Brooklyn, NY). She was awarded an artist-in-residence at Lacawac Sanctuary and Biological Field Station (Lake Ariel, PA) and has been published in Superstition Review and Hyperallergic.
Represented by Bryant Street Gallery
Affiliated with Kenise Barnes Fine Art
Questions and inquires? sarah.morejohn@gmail.com