Lou Morrison
Nepenthes of Borneo
Artist Statement: Talking & Listening to Plants
Artists regarding nature are like ants that move about from place to place. Some plants in Borneo, like the ephyphytic myrmecodia, are honeycombed with interior chambers and passageways for ants. Some theorize the ants protect the plant from other insects. Others believe ants are beneficial because of the humus they drag into the plant’s chambers. We are as ill-defined as all that. We carry stuff with us where we go. We leave it, germinate with what we carry out. We speak. Every word a ripple. How do you travel. What do you do in the places you go. You may overlook ants and the chambers they inhabit. You may crawl down into their world and peer in and theorize about ants and make a living at this. Or you may do something in between. As a non-scientist writer this is what I do. I do the in-between.
After Lou Morrison’s father retired from the Army in 1961, they lived on the road. He grew up in the back seat of a Buick Jetstar 88 on Route 66. He lived in California, Arkansas, Arizona, Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Kansas again by the seventh grade. He went to several different schools in each of these places. He got to like moving, riding down the highway in the car. It afforded the illusion of freedom. He learned to read and write there. After high school graduation, he kept on moving and reading and writing.