new exhibition
the ocean
never gives up
join us for an opening reception Friday, October 24th from 5:30 - 8pm!
Artist
statement
“I situate my studio practice at the intersection of textile and architecture. If the nature of architecture is fixed and permanent then the opposite would be a textile, collapsible and movable. Further consideration would show more common links than differences. Both mediums define space, create shelter and allow privacy; a textile however, has the advantage of flexibility. It is a semi two-dimensional plane that has the ability to fold, drape, move and change to its surroundings.
My work uses cloth construction as a fundamental center, a place to start from and move back to. With a background in weaving, I see myself as a builder; drawing clear connections between the lines of thread laid perpendicularly through a warp and the construction of architectural spaces.
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In recent works woven textiles and architecture are explored as they pertain to movement—movement described by and remembered through the outlining material landscape. The movement through a landscape, the pliability of a textile, as well as their gridded systems, are described and explored in relation to social structures of citizenship and intersecting parts of a whole. Leading to recognition of these systems as boundaries and edges framing the life and movement within.
My current exhibition The Ocean Never Gives Up, is made up of a series of natural dyed silk wall works. Some are cast in concrete stilling the free movement of a fabric. While others pieces are dimensional structures, being held open by a metal frame and allowed the space to drape and holding space for softness. These works of strips and subtle grids allow for a shift and release of lines using moiré effect as the viewer moves around them.
Within the weaving, each thread holds its own unique shape and color, much like the intersecting parts of a larger system. Unlike a painter who mixes colors, I allow each individual thread to hold its own, creating complex colorways through their interlaced arrangement. Ultimately, my work explores how these systems—as both boundaries and edges—define our lives. The result is a series of works that pair the softness of handwoven silk with the rigidity of architectural materials, weaving the living landscape into a structured form.
With a palette of natural dye I am exploring place through color. Each color I extract from my dye garden is a direct reflection of their hyper-geography—environment, weather patterns and specific time and place all influence the color I get in the dye pot. This process inverts the traditional relationship between artist and place: I take the site, the earth, and the raw landscape with me into the studio.
Ultimately, the work materializes through a variety of mediums all traced back to the line of a thread. I am interested in understanding my studio practice as an object of labor in a constant state of becoming, something that is pliable and alive.”
about the artist
is a sculptor whose work investigates the intersections between textile and architecture.
Gregory received her BFA from the University of Oregon and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago from the Fiber and Material Studies Department. She was awarded The Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts, and with this award moved to Amsterdam, where she took a role as Guest Artist at The Gerrit Rietveld Academie of Art. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and internationally including Through the Thread at the Rockwell Museum of Art, Devotion/Destruction: Craft Inheritance at Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Projects, Load Barring: The Art of Construction at The Hunterdon Art Museum, and Bodies at Rest, Brookfield Properties, Brooklyn Commons. Gregory’s work has been reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic, Surface Design Journal, Art Critical, and Peripheral Vision Press, and incorporated into many collections including Al Shand’s collection at the Speed Museum and the US Embassy in Sri Lanka. Crystal Gregory is an Associate Professor within the School of Arts and Visual Studies and has recently been titled the Arturo Alonzo Sandoval Endowed Professorship in Fiber at the University of Kentucky.