Bob & Friends Nevada Neighbors Talk 2024

The Capital City Art Initiative’s Nevada Neighbors series of public talks includes interviews with artists in their studios or in a gallery setting. For this talk, CCAI presents remembrances by fourteen former students, friends, colleagues, and family members about the late Robert Morrison’s long career as a teacher and as an artist. Viewers are invited to watch the presentation online at    • Bob & Friends Nevada Neighbors Talk 2024  

CCAI’s exhibition, “A Glimpse Back”, by Morrison is in Western Nevada College’s Bristlecone Gallery, 2201 W College Parkway, Carson City. The show is up through December 11; the gallery is open to the public, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

The Initiative is grateful to Lynn McLellan, Bob’s long-time partner, for loaning his art to us for the exhibition and for providing great details and stories about specific pieces. Her coordination was vital to the exhibition.

The artists, friends, colleagues, and family members who provided the remembrances include: Trish Andrew, J Damron, Russell Dudley, Jeff Erickson, Edw Martinez, Lynn McLellan, Jens Morrison, Lesna Morrison, Nora Morrison, Jean-Paul Perrotte, Fred Reid, Mick Sheldon, Sharon Rosse, and Tamara Scronce.

Morrison (1941 – 2018), created countless sculptures, paintings, and drawings during his lifetime. Late in his career, his metal sculptures evolved to include sound. A major installation work was Tongues: The Half Life of Morphine (1986) presented by the Nevada Museum of Art as part of Robert Morrison: A Retrospective in 2004. Quoted from the Museum’s catalog by the same title, critic Jeff Kelley wrote: “As a sculptor, he works with manufactured steel plate. As a performer, he works with electronic and ambient sound. That he is and uses both suggests the degree to which neither, alone, defines his identity as an artist. Like an endless string of reflections, that identity teeters on the edge of powerful dualities: abstraction and figuration, masculine and feminine, denial and expression, mass communication and isolation, silence and speech — maybe even father and son, which, if you are a man and an artist represents both the power and powerlessness of your own personality.”

Morrison created and showed his art for over five decades in many group and one-person exhibitions locally and nationally, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Florida, Texas, and New York. He earned a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Fresno, a master’s degree from Stanford University, and did post-graduate studies at the University of California, Davis. Sculpture Magazine did a feature article on Morrison written by William L. Fox in its March, 2005, edition. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Morrison a Visual Arts Fellowship in 1990 and the Nevada Arts Council awarded him Visual Arts Fellowships in 1990 and 1984. He was Professor in the Art Department and chair of the sculpture program at the University of Nevada Reno from 1968 – 2017 and was awarded Emeritus status on his retirement.

Western Nevada College is a component of the Nevada System of Higher Education, with campuses in Carson City, Douglas County, and Fallon. CCAI is an artist-centered nonprofit organization committed to community engagement in contemporary visual arts through exhibitions, illustrated talks, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online activities.

The Initiative is funded by the John and Grace Nauman Foundation, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, Carson City Cultural Commission, Kaplan Family Charitable Fund, Southwest Gas Corporation Foundation, Steele & Associates LLC, and CCAI sponsors and members.