Artist Bio:
     I was born into unconventionality. A 20 year experience as a performing “Toy Boy” is proof positive. My passion and compassion for life has been demonstrated through my work with the mentally ill and challenged. My background, which I consider eclectic, includes a successful 7 year stint as an independent business person. My current obsession is lure coursing (racing) a sighthound (Basenji). Sighthounds chase by sight, just like you and I. My introduction to this sub-culture began 2 years ago . I own the #1 Basenji in the country (2005-2006), “Grace.”
     Let me start from the beginning.
     Picture This: It’s 1949 and I’m nine months old, sitting in an old tin wash bucket welded to the end of a twelve-foot pole being balanced on my father’s forehead.
     Now Picture This: I’m eighteen years old, doing a free headstand on top of a twenty-three-foot perch pole balanced on my father’s forehead performing on Don Amechi’s Televised International Showtime in Sherbrooke, Canada (1967). We share the bill with, among others, “The Human Cannonball Act” (the world famous Zacchinis).
     Such was my beginning. Born into a first-generation family acrobatic act, my father, two brothers, sister and myself – billed as “Al Morgan and His Toy Boys,” later to be called the “Al Morgan Family,” performed throughout New England, Canada, and as far south as Tennessee. Starting in local bars, we graduated to nightclubs, carnivals/state fairs, corporations, the Boston Garden, Madison Square Garden, commercials for unicycles, and ended on Don Amechi’s International Showtime. At eighteen I ran away from the “circus” and joined art school.
     In 1984 I was a Visiting Artist at San Diego State. I taught drawing, painting, composition and worked individually with graduate students. While there I collaborated with the “Home of Guiding Hands,” a facility for the mentally challenged, where I took my drawing students, and we drew them and they drew us. A dual portrait show was held at the Master’s Gallery. In 1989 I was a Visiting Artist at Ohio State University. In 2002 and 2003 as adjunct faculty I taught foundation drawing courses at UMaine Orono.
     In 2004 I was awarded A.R.T., a fund of the Berkshire Taconic Foundation Grant for drawing. For the following three years I was engaged in this effort. In 2007 I suffered a stroke which I am currently in rehab for. Past drawings are being reevaluated at this time as I book my circus to various venues around the country.