What Art Can Do: A Conversation with Janet Morgan (Illustrated Edition)

“Morgan’s images display our own felt electricity, the crackling auras and fields that we know for sure are there, not just from new scientific sensors, but from the way our bodies so often feel. We are not only stardust, but wild patterned energy, dust devils swirling through space for just a time.” —Kim Stanley Robinson, award-winning science-fiction author

When Heather Sanderson and Janet Morgan sat down for a podcast interview an hour flew by. Heather’s natural curiosity and skill at listening brought out many stories from a long life in art. Here they have added more than eighty images of Janet’s work to bring the words and stories to life.

Inspired by a podcast conversation between Janet Morgan and Heather Sanderson, this short book explores what art is and what it can do both personally and collectively.

Janet talks about her creative process and shares the wisdom that making and teaching art has brought to her (and through her to others). In exploring the outrageous, the foolish, and the divine, Janet shares how some of her best work started with a failure, rejection, and/or making a mess and what that means (in art and in life). She then shares a vision of the healing and inclusive power of art, especially in relation to building community.

Heather offers a plant spirit reading in relation to this work, and talks about why working with plants is a key part of our planetary evolution. Worksheets to aid in creating your own deity, commitments to your art, and other calls to action are included to make this book an immersive and interactive experience, so that you can contribute to the conversation in your own way. Together, the future is possible!

Size: 8.5 x 11″

Buy the Book

Paperback available:

Amazon: US, CA, UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, JP, AU, NL, SE, PL
Barnes & Noble (US)
Booksamillion (US)
Bookshop.org (US)
McNally Robinson (CA)
Powell’s Books (US)
Waterstones (UK)

Find an Independent Book Store Near You (CA)

Bookstores in Brooklyn, NY & NYC:
Books are Magic
The Center for Fiction
Greenlight Bookstore
McNally Jackson
The Strand

Also available as a black and white book with six images in paperback and eBook form. For more on that edition see this page.

Janet Morgan has had a long and varied art career, involving painting, public art, dance, environmental work, curating and children’s books. Among her figurative painting series are Body Temples, Deities (150) and wild women, musicians, and dancers (Middle Eastern and modern).

During her travels she has painted landscapes from Antarctica to Kyrgyzstan, Turkey to British Columbia. She has been an artist-in-residence at Death Valley National Park, Weir Farm National Historic Site, the Babayan Cultural Center in Cappadocia, Hanksville Elementary School in Utah, and the Luminous Bodies Residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point in Toronto. She was a teaching Artist in Residence at the Omega Institute for 14 years, and has taught at the Rubin Museum of Art, the Art Students League of New York, and the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

For 18 years, she was an Expressive Arts Therapist with adult cancer patients at Sloan Kettering. Her large paintings have been featured on stage at the Omega’s Women and Power Conference in New York City, at Burning Man in Nevada, and at the Parliament of World Religions in Toronto, Canada. You can find out more about her and see her work at www.janetmorgan-art.net.

Reviews:

“A beautiful exploration of Janet Morgan’s vivid artwork and her evolution as an artist.”—Pierre Hungr

“I just finished What Art Can Do and, as an artist myself, I fell in love with the artwork and the fact that Janet Morgan shares her spiritual and artistic journey. If you buy this book, I would highly recommend the color edition because the artwork’s so incredible. I found the color edition a little hard to find on Amazon, but it’s here somewhere. —Sheila Martin, author of “The Coney Island Book of the Dead, An Illustrated Novel.”

Read a review “Back to the Boho” as featured on California Desert Arts.

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