New Horizons: The Cactus Blossoms and the art of George Morrison
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Minneapolis Americana band The Cactus Blossoms released a new album on Aug. 30, “Every Time I Think About You.”
For the first time, however, the brother duo Page Burkum and Jack Torrey did not use a photo of themselves for the album cover, but rather an iconic artwork by the renowned Minnesota modernist and abstract expressionist George Morrison. Morrison was a member of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
“We thought, ‘Man, it’d be nice to have some beautiful artwork that Page and I don’t mind looking at, as opposed to a picture of ourselves,” Jack Torrey says.
“As Minnesotans, we’re very proud of him. He’s a legendary artist,” Burkum adds. “We’re just honored and humbled to be able to use it.”
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The artwork is “Spirit Path, New Day, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape,” an acrylic and pastel on paper piece Morrison did in 1990, ten years before his death. The painting, which is in the collection of The Minnesota Museum of American Art, is one of Morrison’s horizon works, where a sea of acid-bright colors meets a rusty green sky.
Burkum and Torrey had been fans of Morrison for years, they say. Burkum even owns a print by the artist.
“I happened to be lucky enough to find one of his prints for sale at an estate sale of all places,” he says. “So I was living with it all the time, and even more aware of his work from that.”
As The Cactus Blossoms were writing the album, and recording in February at Creation Audio studio in Minneapolis, they started to think Morrison’s imagery might be a good fit. The album meditates on loss, time, grief and expectations.
“He has many years of beautiful paintings and different styles, and also his sculptural work has always been exciting, but it seemed like a long shot that we get to use it for a record cover,” Torrey says.
They reached out to friend Todd Bockley of the Minneapolis Bockley Gallery, who represents the George Morrison Estate, which is run by Morrison’s son Briand Morrison. Bockley has been instrumental in teaching the brothers about Minnesota and regional artists, they say.
“I imagine all the people who will be exposed to Morrison’s work for the first time through this connection to their music, which leads to the natural connection of Minnesota as the shared home of Jack and Page and Morrison,” Bockley says. “This landscape isn‘t the first time they’ve visualized northern Minnesota — their ‘Mississippi’ video is black and white and depicts landscapes of northern Minnesota waters, and now they center Morrison’s colorful depiction.”
(Midwestern art and landscape are also featured in the band’s new music video for the track “Statues,” which was filmed at Fred Smith’s Wisconsin Concrete Park in northern Wisconsin.)
Bockley then connected the band to Briand Morrison, who is responsible for granting copyright permissions for his father’s work. Briand says it was an easy decision; he’s a jazz guitarist himself, based in Grand Portage where his father lived and had his studio, Red Rock.
“I was delighted,” Briand Morrison says. “I like to be a part of music and other people’s arts and so it’s wonderful to share.”
Morrison says while he’s received several requests to use his father’s art for book covers, this is the first request for an album cover. That is, after his album, “Briand Morrison Presents Musical Impressions: The Art of George Morrison.”
“The hope, from my perspective, is to get eyes on my dad’s work, to get it out there as much as I can, so I’m always willing and eager to grant copyright permission,” Briand Morrison says.
In fact, “Spirit Path, New Day, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape” also appears on a U.S Postal Forever stamp, along with four other horizon paintings by Morrison, printed in 2022.
“Those paintings mean quite a lot to him,” Briand says. “They reflect a lot, where he lived and those moments in his life.”
Briand Morrison says his mother and George Morrison’s former partner, the Grand Marais-based artist Hazel Belvo, was instrumental to the horizon paintings. In the ‘80s, Morrison was diagnosed with Castleman’s disease and the family thought death was imminent.
“He was very depressed,” Belvo says. “I thought if he started painting, he would get better.”
Belvo set up Morrison with some small canvases in her studio and he started painting his “Horizon Series.” His health improved and he would continue painting for more than a decade. This series led to the “Red Rock Variations,” which is the collection that includes “Spirit Path, New Day.” Both series convey empathy, spirituality and respect for nature, Belvo says.
“He grew up on the lake with that horizon line constantly in his environment” on the Grand Portage reservation, Belvo says. “I know that George, the horizon line was for him a metaphor for infinity. He was always curious about what could happen beyond the horizon.”
She adds, “The universal appeal of his work is a question that is before time and beyond time, the whole concept of the horizon.”
In a film about Morrison, “Standing in the Northern Lights” — the title is what Morrison’s Anishinaabe name, Waawaategonegaabo, means — he spoke about these Lake Superior meditations.
“For me, the horizon line became a symbol of the forces of nature meeting the universe. The edge of the world, so to speak or trying to see beyond the unknown,” Morrison said. “I’m always fascinated with the mystery of the horizon. The change in the colors and the moods at various times of the day. A sense of sound and movement above and below the line.”
The Cactus Blossoms say they considered a couple of different works by Morrison, but ultimately came back to the “Red Rock Variation.”
“It’s got such an intense, beautiful color palette. It’s somehow just a very intense piece of Lake Superior, which is a beast of a lake,” Torrey says. “But it also has this peacefulness and serenity to it that I think really fits this batch of songs.”
The connection isn’t literal, he says, but the song lyrics do feature references to colors (“I picture you flying in a purple sky” on the title track) and the album is tinged with some psychedelic electric guitar that resonates with the artwork.
Burkum says the title track, “Everytime I Think About You,” is about grief and losing a friend.
“I think that looking out at the water and seeing that long horizon fits really well with that, about the passage of time,” he says. “All the beauty and the emptiness at the same time.”
The Cactus Blossoms start the tour for the new album Sept. 13 at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul (with Humbird). On Sept. 14, they head to the Earth Rider Brewery in Superior, Wisc.
Bockley Gallery is presenting some of Morrison’s horizon paintings Sept. 6-8 at “The Armory Show, New York’s Art Fair.”
“Spirit Path, New Day, Red Rock Variation: Lake Superior Landscape” is not currently on view as the Minnesota Museum of American Art is in the process of re-installing its permanent collection. It may go on view starting in October.
