Introduction/Ree Morton, Signs of Love, 1976

Narrator: Welcome! The works in this sixth floor exhibition make creative use of craft techniques—including some that you might be familiar with. You’ll find thread, yarn, clay, beads, and other materials. Some of the artists use rope or rubber, others make their work out of stuffed animals and candle wax. All of them take an experimental approach to their materials—playing with them to find new possibilities. 

One great example is right here at the beginning of the exhibition. It’s called Signs of Love. The artist Ree Morton made the letters and some of the other materials out of Celastic, a kind of plastic that’s flexible when it’s wet and hardens as it dries. Since artists hadn’t really used Celastic before, Morton could work with no sense of rules or expectations. The title tells us it’s about love, but what is it saying? There are some roses, and a pair of portraits showing a man and a woman who seem to be a couple. Then there are ladders, and words on the wall like “symbols” and “atmospheres.” These things could have something to do with love, but what? Morton leaves it up to us to come up with the story.