Ep. # 192: Rebecca Morgan, Clearfield, PA (for now)-based artist via Brooklyn/Pratt, talks about working in the middle of nowhere and the liminal, working in – and then getting out of – NYC, and how she leverages Instagram and her impactful supporters.
Clearfield, Pennsylvania-based artist Rebecca Morgan talks about:
Her hometown of Clearfield, a financially distressed former coal town, where she currently lives in the home she grew up in with her mom, in between teaching gigs in other states, which affords her tons of time to work, but also feels like suspended adolescence; the liminal relation she has to the town, which both rejected her and she rejects, and despite those rejections she’s roughly the only one among her fellow school kids who’s still (for the moment) there; her dating life in all its challenges and even brutality, through dating sites and aps, and which include things like driving 4 hours to New York to go on dates with art dudes; how happy she’ll be to settle in just about any city EXCEPT New York, even though she went to Pratt and connected with the gallery that now represents her before leaving the city, and how her current home in the middle of nowhere affords her the time and space just to exist (vs. killing herself to survive in NY); how she doesn’t think she would have left NY had it not been for her landing gallery representation; her very substantial Instagram following: how she got there, what she posts, how she interacts with her followers, and how it gives her a presence, and even sales, even while living in ‘the middle of nowhere;’ her most impactful IG supporters: Juxtapoz magazine and Amy Sedaris; body image in relation to her self-portraiture, which ranges from naturalistic to over-the-top; and we close with an audio dating profile for Rebecca, where she makes her intentions known and I begin playing a little matchmaker.