Curatorial Statement
Artist’s Reception: Friday, June 2, 2017 from 5-7pm MT
Exhibition Posted Online: Monday, June 5 by 10am Mountain Time
“My creative research plays a distinct role in the concepts behind my work. I am interested in learning about animals with stressed habitats due to human interaction. I am sensitive to looking for creatures that we as humans can relate to, giving us a stronger sense of our relationship to the earth. I am also intrigued in the way other cultures, past and present, relate in their ecosystems and how I can incorporate these ideas of their nature and culture into my work.
In addition to my cultural and ecological artistic research I am interested in looking at creation, ancestral, and destruction stories from other places and cultures. I strive to create reinterpretations of these stories that are more relevant to the contemporary narrative I am trying to convey while also looking to relate an idea with empathy, beauty and emotion.
In my most recent work I am using clay to build figurative sculptures of humans encased in animals. I use delicate and emotive gesture, rich texture, and subdued, sepia tones to create telling, intimate objects that capture current psychological, environmental, and cultural feelings. The figures are contemplative and inward thinking, seeing a future outcome that is uncertain. The animals I use are either extinct or have become endangered due to human impact in this era of “great acceleration” since the Industrial Revolution. The concepts behind the work are about our contemporary environmental issues while the visual structure pursues a totemic feel. I am looking at visual material including Native American ceremonial masks and regalia, Byzantine and Renaissance devotional painting, secular portraits and altarpieces, and Egyptian antiquities.”
-Crystal Morey