SCOUTV | House Museums | Sarah Morrison | Episode #11
Channel: Somerville Media Center
Date: 2017-03-22

In a corner of Sarah Morrison’s apartment, nestled among things you’d expect to find in any Somerville kitchen—a recycling bin, a case of Mountain Dew—there’s a shimmering emerald gown. 

“Oh!” Morrison exclaims, “I should turn it on!” Sure enough, with the click of a remote, the dress starts glowing with an otherworldly green light. “I have too many hobbies, and one of them is making ball gowns,” laughs Morrison, who’s been drawing and creating since she was a kid. 

Morrison has always been interested in fantasy. She sees it as a way to unwind after a tough day at work, to manage the drudgery and uncertainty of day-to-day life. “There’s so much stuff going on [in the world] that’s really stressful, and fantasy has always been a form of escapism for me,” she explains. “I think it’s really important because of that.” 

Morrison’s apartment is on the smaller side, which means that Open Studios is your one chance each year to check out that light-up ball gown and a lot of the other work she usually keeps stashed in closets. But the smaller space is still a hub for her creative community. She welcomes artists of all skill levels into her kitchen for figure drawing sessions on the first Wednesday evening of each month, where models hold one-minute, two-minute and five-minute poses, and sometimes hold a pose for the full three-hour session. Other times, she takes a day to use her home as a shared coworking space. She says that working around others helps inspire and encourage artists who might feel stuck or need a reason to make something. The collection of creators that drops in on these workdays includes painters and illustrators, but also programmers who show up with their laptops. 

“We’ll get together starting at 10 or 11 in the morning and we’ll go until 10 or 11 at night,” Morrison says. “It’s a lot easier to stay focused and stay working when it’s a lot of us working together rather than working alone.” 

SCOUTV is a multimedia collaboration between Scout Somerville and SCATV that brings the stories in each print edition of Scout to life with video and audio. You can find more installments in the series here.