To create New England Landscape II, Morrison collected ocean driftwood, which he dried in his Cape Cod studio before combining it into this elaborate collage. The technique, inspired in part by the methods of sculptor Louise Nevelson, resulted in an abstract composition that calls attention to the material properties of the wood, to their varied tones and textures, and to the influence of weathering and decay, while a long, narrow sliver of wood in the top right suggests a horizon line separating earth and sky.

Born into the Grand Portage Band of Chippewa in northern Minnesota, Morrison had to navigate art-world stereotypes about Indigenous peoples. He sometimes downplayed the relevance of his Chippewa identity to his art, in part because White art critics reflexively stereotyped his avant-garde experiments with organic materials as “primitive” expressions of his so-called Indianness. But starting in the late 1960s, as civil rights activism, such as the American Indian Movement, reclaimed space for Native self-definition, Morrison found more room to explore and explain the importance of his heritage on his own terms.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)