Morgan MacLean chisels wood by hand, without the use of power tools, drawing inspiration from his urban environment. His sculptures have a quality of craftsmanship rooted in history, and yet are compellingly modern and mysterious in form.

Morgan’s work explores the archaeology of city streets. His art focuses on capturing and archiving an object’s inherent form, while freeing that form to transcend its essence into something curiously unexpected.

Morgan’s work explores the intersection and tension of the contemporary and ancient. It captures in wood the moment of the object’s destruction and contains both the contradictory concepts of art and its implied significance with the imperatives of time and a cultural ethos of disposability.

By carving a sculpture of a contemporary artifact by hand, Morgan captures a historical moment - even if it is in present time. It is the juxtaposition of these contradictions - the moment treated as permanent and the contemporary created through an ancient medium – that Morgan challenges people’s assumptions about the meaning of objects and how that meaning varies in different settings and time periods.

Morgan began his artistic pursuits when he left high school at 16 to work with Josh Simpson at his Glass Blowing Studio as well as the Smith College Museum of Art. He continued his arts education at RISD where he earned a B.F.A. in Sculpture in 2002. He subsequently worked for Frank Gehry and Predock Frane Architects.

Since opening his Studio in 2006 Morgan has been invited to show his work at the IMM Cologne in Cologne Germany; at the Muriel Guepin Gallery in Brooklyn NY; The Affordable Art fair in New York, NY; The High Desert Test Sites in Joshua Tree CA; Specific Merchandise; and Reform Gallery in Los Angeles CA.