Morgan Dummitt
Contact Information
Phone: (917) 359-8675
Studio
890 North 40th Street Philadelphia PA 19104
Sculpture
Artist's Biography
Sculptor Morgan Dummitt was born and raised in Manhattan, where he began studying the figure in 2005 at the Art Students League of New York. In 2013 he earned a certificate in sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a Bachelor's of the Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania. He has also studied at the Florence Academy of the Arts, the Pelletieri Stone Carving Academy, and privately with Fred X. Brownstein. In 2016 he served a six month residency at the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. He has exhibited throughout the country, and completed numerous public and private commissions.
Artist's Statement
Sculpture opens a window onto a frozen, timeless world. In his poem “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” Keats describes the feeling of looking through this window: an eternal story is unfolding in the stone relief, and has always been. It is in the process of consummation and yet will always remain unconsummated. Here is the inherent tension which underlies my work: the vibrant, desperate strivings of the characters is juxtaposed with our inability to reach them and their own inability to complete their stories.
As a figurative sculptor, my goal is to use tangible forms to represent ideas which are too fleeting and complex to be represented directly. While I am drawn to the figure’s expressively sensual form, I find it infinitely more meaningful when used as a tool for exploring the themes that recur in my work: the struggle for mental wellness, the search for hope and spirituality as an atheist, isolation, and exhaustion. To me, there is an elegiac sadness in the arrested expression of the Grecian Urn, which I seek to capture in stories of my own.
To tell the story of these emotionally murky experiences, I find that elements of suggestion, personal symbolism, and myth open the sculpture to a far deeper range of experiential possibilities for the audience. I want viewers to feel as though they have stumbled upon characters in the midst of performing an unknowable rite; who the figures are and precisely what lives they have led are as opaque as they are irrelevant. What matters is the visceral tug of the experience, the feeling that these gestures and adornments are invested with palpable spiritual gravity
Selected Exhibitions
2019
Narrative and Illusion, Art League of Rhode Island, Providence, RI
Sculpture in the Glen, InLiquid at the Burches, Gladwyne, PA
2018
A Generous Kingdom III, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR
Contemporary Kennett, Kennett Square, PA
Naked in New Hope 2018, Sidetracks Gallery, New Hope, PA
Fault Lines, Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017
Romantic Poets, Dohm Alley, Princeton, NJ
2016
5 x 5 x 5, River Oaks Square Art Center, Alexandria, LA
Chasing Ghosts, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, OR
Beauty Marks, Episcopal Academy Crawford Campus Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Naked in New Hope, Sidetracks Gallery, New Hope, PA
Real People, Old Courthouse Figurative League, Woodstock, IL
Centennial Visions, St. Gaudens Historic Site, Cornish, NH
National Sculpture Society 83th Annual Exhibition, Brookgreen Gardens, SC
Emerging Artists, Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY
Process: Casting IV, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, Philadelphia, PA
2015
PAFA Faculty Show at Montgomery Community College, Blue Bell, PA
Traction Company, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia, PA
Process: Casting III, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, Philadelphia, PA
Shop Te(a)ch, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, Philadelphia, PA
2014
Small Works III, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, Philadelphia, PA
PAFA Sculpture Faculty Exhibition, Noyes Museum, Hammonton, NJ
Group Show, Philadelphia Plastic Club Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2013
SubTraction, NAPOLEON Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Annual Student Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Winter Juried Show, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2012
Annual Student Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Professional Experience
2019 - Present
Pelletieri Stone Carver's Academy, New York, NY
Board Member, Instructor
2015 - Present
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Associate Professor
2013 - Present
Philadelphia Traction Company, Philadelphia, PA
Member, Project Manager
2013 - 2016
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Shop Technician and Foundry Manager
2016
August St. Gaudens Historic Site, Cornish, NH
Sculpture and casting instructor
Awards, Residencies, Honors
2018
Naked in New Hope, Best in Show, Second Place
2016
Augustus St. Gaudens Historic Site, Sculptor-in-Residence
Naked in New Hope, Best in Show, Second Place
Bucks County Community College, Guest Lecturer
2013
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Perez Epstein Prize for Figure Modeling
The Lee Prize, Figurative Drawing
2012
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Perez Epstein Prize for Figure Modeling
The Cook Prize, Figure Drawing
2011
Alumni Juried Award
Selected Commissions
2017
North Carolina Quarters, Large Cold-Cast Aluminum Relief
Raleigh, NC
2015
Join or Die, Bronze Relief for Logan Hotel Lobby
Philadelphia, PA
2013 - 2014
Ex Paradisio, Marble Relief, Private Collection
Philadelphia, PA
Education
2017 - 2018
Apprenticeship with Fred X Brownstein, North Bennington, VT
2016
Pelletieri Stone Carver's Academy, New York, NY
2010 - 2013
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Summa Cum Laude
2009 - 2013
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Certificate, Sculpture
Fall 2012
Florence Academy of Art, Florence, Italy
2004 - 2009
Art Students League of New York, New York, NY
