Artists Past & Present:

Portia Munson, Pink Project, 1994, detail, Installation of found pink objects, Courtesy of the artist.

Portia Munson creates painting, sculpture, and installation works based on her own practice of collecting. Her most famous work the Pink Project was created out of her endless collection of discarded objects, all of which are varying shades of pink. Munson is drawn to color and the cultural connotations it brings: pink for girls, blue for boys, green for anything having to do with nature, etc. She often paints from still life set-ups of these collected plastic items, but does not use painting alone to express her ideas. Through installations and sculptures her ideas are enlarged, arranged, and built up over time.

“I would say I’m an environmentalist and a feminist and what I mean by that is that I think that I’m really interested in this obsession with consumption that our culture has. And so a lot of my work is really looking at that. And I was born in the beginning of the sixties and just being a woman in the world, I feel fortunate to live in this country. Gender issues are definitely something I’m concerned about. Right now, my real top interest is environmental issues and how we consume so much stuff which also translates into polluting.”

Aesthetic Response Questions for Portia Munson’s Pink Project: