Hello everyone, I’m Morgan Hill, currently a second year MFA graduate with a concentration in Studio Arts. I am born and raised in Baltimore County, Maryland, but also frequent to the DC and NYC area. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Towson University and decided to pursue an MFA to cultivate my portfolio, make connections, learn different pedagogies, and broaden my technical skills.

Morgan gazes to the left against the wall, with sheets of chinese calligraphy pinned to the wall behind her
Headshot in my studio, surrounded by my calligraphy works.

I’ve specialized in art since I was young, and became serious in my craft by enrolling in an art magnet highschool, Carver Center for Arts and Technology, where I learned many different disciplines such as photography, film, sculpture, painting and drawing. I’m also interested in dance, music and the communities that become bonded because of that. The evolution of my artwork on a conceptual level, to where I am now continuously allows me to ask new questions and create experimentations.

Progression of Works

Overall, domesticity has been a reoccurring theme of the work, and slowly I explore how my identity informs my perception and process. My current research reveals spoken and unspoken forms of communication in the various spheres of my communities I interact with as a black individual in my daily life. With a journalistic approach, I record traces of human activities by placing Yupo paper in domestic spaces with high traffic, letting natural oils accumulate overtime. Ink is then washed over, revealing the resistance of the temporal composition. Themes that inform this body of work include invisibility and visibility, the right to opacity, and black sensibility. With the support of people from my hometown, their presence is a direct collaboration of my spontaneous process. I will continue to explore my intersectional identity in an ever present presence of myself by cultivating a specific codex to respond back to my community through procuring a digital cultural heritage project for this fellowship.