Artist profile — Morgan Milders

By Rachel Bardin

Two plastic flamingoes welcome visitors to the Morgan Milders retrospective. To celebrate her recent graduation from Flagler College, Milders and her family turned their home into a showcase of her artistic timeline and the hot pink lawn ornaments are an appropriate greeting party for the artist who has an affection for kitsch.

Milders says she’s “attracted to tacky things.” A pink table features a surprisingly pleasing pattern of flamingoes. An installation of found travel imagery is framed in that same bright pink. On a small piece of wood, she lacquers on a repetition of pointy-hatted gnomes to create a glossy argyle.

In the dining area hangs her first exploration of pattern and silhouette. A dark blue curtain has shapes organized into rows and columns. The shapes are all the same; they show a man reading on the toilet. However, each is individual, cut-out from different photos of female celebrities. Her intention is to combine the unexpected and “have a weird juxtaposition of an image within a silhouette.” The result is a piece with that can be appreciated at several levels.

The idea of silhouettes with imagery inside came from her murals class with professor Don Martin. Milders and her classmates created a mural for Julington Creek Elementary School where they used pictures of the students playing to create the silhouettes. This class and its professor had a large influence on her recent work. She says, “Don Martin is always so inspirational and he’s so tough on you.”

Milders places a high value on work ethic and craftsmanship. While cutting out shapes and meticulously stitching in hundreds of feathers may not be everyone’s way of achieving Zen, she describes it as therapeutic.

Considering this, one cannot help but be impressed by creations such as the feather gun (See Canvas on Pg 16). Along with the technical achievements, her concept and awareness combine to create striking work.

Along with the gun, Milders has an exotic trophy hunt. A wall installation portrays gold flake and wood burned images of gazelles. “My middle name is Gesell. I have one right here” she says as she shows a tattoo of a gazelle on her ribs.

Milders prefers to call inspiration for her latest work “den art” though she says others have suggested Florida, Kentucky, or redneck as themes. Where do the ideas for this body of work come from?

“I remember exactly where I was on U.S. 1 when I thought to do the gun. There’s this giant farm on U.S. 1 that’s for sale and I was right there,” says Milders. Her commutes between Palm Coast and St. Augustine give her a lot of time for meditation.

For now she is happy to relax a little after receiving her B.A., but wants to make sure she keeps momentum through the summer. In the fall, she will return to Flagler to work on her B.F.A. She is excited to see how her art will evolve from here. Milders credits many of her professors for pushing her, including Patrick Moser and Leslie Robison. She also has a big respect for the feedback she gets from her friends and peers.

After she receives her B.F.A., Milders wants to attend graduate school and continue to refine her work. “My mom always tells me ’stay in school until the economy’s better, ‘” she says with a laugh.