Portia Munson is anything but a hoarder. She’s a thoughtful collector who amasses discarded and secondhand items with a keen and incisive eye. She’s been doing so since her years in undergrad in the 80s at Cooper Union in New York City, where she first took a deep dive into her lifelong fascination with the color pink. Munson began to explore the color by collecting found pink items, analyzing what sorts of items were pink, how they were marketed, who they were for, and so on.
Now, over 40 years later, Munson continues to collect pink items and anything else that catches her eye. Her multi-disciplinary art practice ranges from sculpture to immersive installations to paintings to film, all created from her museum-like studio in the Catskills. I recently sat down with Munson via Zoom; we discussed her background and point of view as an artist as she showed me her workspace’s nooks and crannies through her screen. Our conversation is below, edited lightly for clarity and length.
Where did your fascination with objects and collecting discarded items originate?
I’ve always been an artist, ever since I was really young. I was pretty dyslexic, so my way of succeeding or expressing myself was through art. I went to art school right out of high school — Cooper Union. I’d always been attracted to the color pink, and while I was at Cooper Union, I formalized how I looked at the color. At that time, when I was 18 or 19 years old, I was really curious about why am I, as a woman, associated with this color? And what does that mean? So I was just kind of collecting anything pink that I could find, and that’s where that collecting started in relation to my work. I would say that continues on in my work still — What do the objects say about who we are? What kind of instructional information is given through objects that we’re sold?
What was it about the color pink that originally fascinated you and drew you in to explore it so intensely?
I always liked the color, but I was always aware that pink was sold and associated with being a woman. Especially when I was first investigating it, there was less of it around, and it was very strongly associated with women. It was more of this pale pink, though there was some hot pink around in the 60s and 70s—and I was just really intrigued by the femininity that was hooked to this color, and hooked to how it was marketed, and what it signified.
Through accumulating it, I could see different patterns. It was almost like an investigation through accumulation, and seeing what information came out of collecting everything in this color.
Can you walk me through your typical collecting thought process? Are you letting what you find speak to you and dictate what you create? Or is it the other way around, where you have an idea and then seek out those items?
I would say both things happen at the same time. I can have an idea, but also the objects themselves will show me the idea. I can give two examples of that.
One is when I was invited to do a piece at MASS MoCA, 15 or more years ago; they wanted me to do a pink and blue piece (pink for girls, blue for boys). And through collecting the color blue and thinking about it as more of a “boy color,” I realized that yes, blue is a little more “boy,” but in terms of plastic and our mass consumption of stuff, it’s really more associated with water. It’s a color that’s used to signify clean water, and it’s sold in relation to that; toys for pools or the bath, or drinking water, or things for the beach. Blue has this water signifier, and is also associated with mermaids, and Southern Belles, and Virgin Marys. So that was a surprise. At first, I was like, Yeah, of course, blue is for boys. But then, when I started collecting it, the stuff itself showed me, No, it has this other meaning too. Which is different than with pink, which has stayed pretty consistently a female, girl-identifying color, for the most part.
Another example was when I was collecting blue for a project I was doing in Portland, Oregon, called “Flood,” where I was filling a gallery with blue plastic organized in different shades. That was very much an environmental piece. While I was collecting for that piece, I was doing a residency there for a month or more, and I was going around to secondhand shops, thrift stores, yard sales, and collecting whatever I could find. I began noticing all of these figurines of women who were all white. So I was looking for blue stuff, but I was noticing this pattern, and I started collecting those things, and then that turned into this piece called “Bound Angel.”
What sorts of characteristics or qualities of a found object do you find most compelling, that pull you in and then incorporate into your work?
When an object has multiple things going on with it. For example, I’ve done a whole series of drawings that I’ve now made into a book, and they’re functional women drawings. They’re objects that are in the form of a woman or part of a woman’s body, and they also have a function, like nutcrackers, or a candle, or a vase, or a music box, those kinds of things. In my studio right now, there’s a painting I’m working on of a woman who’s a Southern Belle, and her arms are up, and she’s a pin cushion with a big skirt. So I’m doing a little painting of her where her pins are going into her skirt, but also into where her crotch is, so that just seemed like an innocent but intense object.
You self-identify as a “feminist and environmental artist,” and on your website, you write: “I believe that the continued pollution and destruction of our environment is the most pressing and dire issue of our time, and for me it is inseparably linked to feminism.” Why is weaving themes of feminism and environmentalism through your work so important to your perspective as an artist? How did that develop?
Right around the same time I was first looking at the color pink, it just seemed clear to me that I was a feminist artist. It had to do with wanting to look at and being really fascinated with the ways that women are treated, how women are perceived in the culture, what kinds of things are marketed toward women; I just had a lot of things I wanted to say about that.
I grew up in a somewhat religious, fundamentalist Christian home, so there were more old-fashioned, traditional roles for men and women. From a young age, I was a little bit rebellious against that, and was like, I don’t think this is quite right.
Then the environmental aspect came with collecting plastic stuff, looking at it, and thinking about it. I’ve always had an environmental awareness and interest, but it seems like to be a conscious, thinking person in our world right now, you’d have environmental inclinations, given the state of things.
What aspect of your impressive career are you proudest of?
Rather than proud, I guess I would say I feel really fortunate to have been able to live my life as an artist. I’m now in my 60s, and to have been able to spend my whole life as an artist, I feel like that’s a gift.
One thing I like is that, because I’m dealing with all of these found objects, when I do a large installation or a piece, there’s something for everybody. Everybody has some kind of memory or association that they’re able to bring to it themselves, that pulls people in. I’m trying to make work that’s beautiful, but also a little disturbing, and that triggers people to think about things; to think about the embedded meanings in this seemingly innocent stuff.
I also feel really good about how I’ve delved into looking at and thinking about the culture. I first made and showed the pink project table in ‘89 as a graduate student at Rutgers, and I feel like it was sort of ahead of its time, in a way; there wasn’t other work really done like that. I think a younger me, seeing my work now, would be pretty excited about how I went about it and where I’ve come to.