Janet Morton

Morton was born in 1963 and raised in Guelph and Burlington, Ontario. She is based in Guelph. She trained as a sculptor, earning a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree from York University in 1990. In 1980, Morton learned to knit in Denmark.

The artist began incorporating wool and yarn into her laborious textile-based work in 1992. She also uses recycled materials and materials from nature, and additionally works in video, performance, and public sculpture. Occasionally, Morton works collaboratively.

An example of Morton’s work is Cozy (1999-2000), which was affiliated with the Textile Museum of Canada (Toronto, Ontario). Using hand knitting, the artist joined over 800 previously worn off-white sweaters to cover a cottage on Ward Island (Toronto, Ontario) for eighteen days in November 1999 and a metal structure at Trinity Square Park (Toronto, Ontario) for three days in April 2000. The initial construction was done with the artist seated on the cottage roof while the homeowner, a friend of hers, continued to live inside. In the thesis The Strength of a Knitted Home: Retrieving Histories through Janet Morton’s Wool Installations, although Morton describes herself as not “overtly political,” author Emily Jane Rothwell explores a socio-economic interpretation of Cozy; for example, she observes media bias in favor of the Ward Park installation, which was associated more with the middle class whereas the follow-up installation was linked more to the lower class, as homeless people lived (at the time and thereafter) in the park. In Morton’s own words, “The idea [for Cozy] came from my thinking about issues of home and homelessness…it was implicit, so I didn’t need to say it in words.” Morton, who considers herself a feminist, has also acknowledged feminist intent in Cozy in the context of knitting traditionally being a domestic activity overlooked as a valid form of art.

A retrospective of twenty years of her work, entitled The Ravelled Sleeve, was held in 2012 at the McDonald Stewart Art Centre at the University of Guelph (Guelph, Ontario).

Morton’s work is in the collections of Cambridge Galleries, Museum London, and the National Gallery of Canada, as well as corporate and private collections.

Morton has received funding from the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2001, she was the recipient of the Paris Studio Award (France) from the latter funding agency.