Tribute to John Morse

I met John in the late 1990s - by pure fate and/or the universe's cunning wit - at a party in downtown Houston.  We quickly became acquainted and fast friends thereafter. In a time before texting was popular, John used to pop into the gallery I was running at the time and bring me art to custom frame. Once I discovered that some of the art was his, I understood the importance of this person I had met: John Morse.

Through the years I spoke with John consistently and would visit him and his partner, Ross, in their Galveston home.  We'd share drinks late into the night and often come up with ideas for John’s work. As he was already established in the art world and had been featured in museums, private collections and magazines, I could not figure out a way to expand John’s work to the public nor was John very interested in having his original pieces in galleries at the time.  With celebrity collectors, commissions from museums and city parks, John didn't need the help.  But as Ross recently told me, "John never wanted to be famous, but he wanted his art to be famous."

I came up with the idea of John selling limited editions of his work sometime between 2010 and 2013. John had done limited editions before, but each one had been hand painted, stenciled, or had something "original" done on each piece. We spent many nights talking on the phone for hours coming up with the best way to show his collage work as a true print-master's limited edition. The idea came to fruition sometime around 2014 when it was decided that high-resolution photographs of the pieces would be taken and expertly printed as lithos, while keeping the ubiquitous shadows that most print makers would remove.  The result- breathtaking. With these new limited editions and curated collection of originals, John had his Texas debut show with me at Ao5 Gallery in 2015. I'll never forget it... nearly every piece had a red dot by the end of the evening.

After the show, John told me (and this is difficult for me to write without sounding pretentious or arrogant) that he would trust no one on the planet with his collection of art except for me, and he brought me nearly 5 decades of original work.  With his usual manly tone and always forthcoming compliments, he dropped off the art and said, "Oh, hey handsome. This is everything. Here ya go bud."  

But it wasn't everything.  John had a studio in New York and a studio in Atlanta.  As he slowly downsized and moved locations, he'd discover more. And, of course, he never stopped creating new pieces.