Project Tag: Crystal Morey

THE WOMEN

THE WOMEN

THE WOMEN


Oct 28, 2017 – Apr 21, 2018

Ferrin Contemporary
1315 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA

Click here for details.

Works on view include recent pieces by women whose primary medium is clay and selected works from private and artist archives by female potters and sculptors.


The Women provides Ferrin Contemporary an opportunity to highlight the range of work by women artists affiliated with the gallery program who are known for their work in ceramics.

Director Leslie Ferrin, a life long advocate for women in ceramics reflects on this moment, “It is gratifying to witness the attention to gender issues taking place throughout society.  These same forces are fueling the interest in examining and bringing recognition to the overlooked contributions of women to postwar visual arts. Many of our collectors who brought a female perspective to building their collections are contributing to the public dialog by acquiring new works and making gifts to institutions. Museums are responding by offering exhibition opportunities, site specific commissions and adding to permanent collections to fill in gaps. It is an exciting time to see these changes taking place and being able to participate in the process.”

Studio Pottery and Design*
Works by
Laura Andreson
Dorothy Hafner
Karen Karnes
Jenny Mendez
Linda Sikora
*available in Ferrin Contemporary square shop

RELATED NEWS, PUBLICATIONS + EVENTS

The Women

Ferrin Contemporary presents selected works by women artists whose primary medium is clay. On view in the gallery and online, we introduce new works by emerging and established artists along with masterworks available from private collections and artist archives.

STUDIO POTTER: WOMEN IN CERAMICS

Winter/Spring 2017
Women in Ceramics Vol. 45 No. 1

In this issue: nine essays remembering the life of Karen Karnes, a deep investigation of the legacy of women in wood-firing, several narratives about artists’ personal journeys in clay, essays on the lives of California artist Ruth Rippon and Swedish artist Hertha Hillfon, a dynamic discussion of contemporary motherhood, international perspectives from Canada, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and India, a look at fourth-wave feminism, and more.

Click for info on Studio Potter.

Click to request complimentary issue online.

“Ruth Rippon, Her Story”
by Nancy M. Servis

Rippon’s artistic production is extensive and leaves an indelible mark on the artistic landscape of Northern California. … The breadth of her work mirrors the artist herself: technically accomplished, experimental, conceptually grounded, and quietly emotive.

Click here for more.

Artist Salon – Nancy M. Servis
Wednesday, November 8
at 6–8:30 pm

Project Art
54 Main St, Cummington, Massachusetts 01026

Join visiting scholar, Nancy M. Servis, from Sacramento, California, for an image-illustrated presentation ‘State of Clay: Bay Area Ceramics,’ followed by a potluck at Project Art.

From pottery to sculptural expression, Servis unveils the dynamic variety of ceramics found in Northern California. Long recognized as a vital and populous state with extensive clay deposits, California has been the home of refined vessel-makers and artistic rule-breakers for over 75 years, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Her lecture contextualizes clay’s extensive use that includes stylistic architecture in Oakland, impassioned potters like Antonio Prieto and Marguerite Wildenhain from the 1950s, and unabashed practitioners like Peter Voulkos and Robert Arneson. They along with select others like Viola Frey, Ruth Rippon, and Ron Nagle laid Nancy Servis’ groundwork for what exists today – a population of fine artist-makers whose work coexists with those who embrace sculpture or even defy ceramic tradition.

Nancy is a recognized art historian, gallerist, and author. She has served as curator, educator and arts administrator in the greater San Francisco Bay Area for over twenty years.

Click for facebook page.

CRYSTAL MOREY

CRYSTAL MOREY

AVAILABLE ARTWORKS & SERIES


THE REPLANTING SERIES


“The urban landscape of my daily life is a stark contrast to the mountains and trees of my childhood. My experiences as a child directly inspire my work today. I am interested in the intellectual, emotional and primitive relationship between humans and their environment. I used to consider mankind to be part of «nature» and subject to natural events. I now realize that it is the biggest variable in changing our planet. Over the past hundred years, humans have altered the planet radically. We are now the driving force behind environmental change. These are the ideas I keep in mind when I create.”

— Crystal Morey, 2022

Over the Water (Rhino and Swan)

Giraffe Madonna and Child

Elephant

Mountain Lion

Over the Land (Mt. Lion and Unicorn)

“As a result of human consumption, climate change, and habitat loss, we are experiencing increased responsibility to care for the living creatures around us. Morey?s delicate porcelain works highlight these precarious connections and our roles as advocates and protectors of our most vulnerable species. Her sculptures narrate the interdependence between humans, plants, and animals while cultivating empathy for our changing world.”

— Crystal Morey, 2019

Entangled: Grizzly(Part 2)

Three Graces

SCULPTURES


African Bush Elephant

Without Borders/ White Rhino Airlift

ABOUT


American, b. 1983, Nevada City, CA
lives and works in Oakland, CA

Crystal Morey sculpts human-animal-plant hybrids as a reflection of our effects on the natural world. Through the delicacy of porcelain, she highlights the struggle of fringe, endangered, and extinct species in an era following rapid industrialization. In her work, these susceptible creatures become indicators of the adverse impacts of human-caused climate change. Morey addresses issues like ocean acidification and habitat consumption while reminding us of nature’s beauty, adaptability, and interconnection. She creates empathy for the most vulnerable, allowing us to hope that it isn’t too late.

In 2006, Morey completed her BFA from the California College of the Arts; she received her MFA from San Jose State University in 2015. Morey has been an artist in residence at The LH Project, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, and the Penland School of Craft.

While referencing art historical traditions within her own generation, her work branches into the new contemporary, high craft, and fine art worlds. Her work has been shown internationally, with showcases at the Frick Pittsburgh and the Scripps College Ceramic Annual.

Morey’s work can be viewed in the permanent collections of the Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey, California, and The Crocker Museum of Art in Sacramento, California. She lives and works in Oakland, California, and is represented by Ferrin Contemporary.

ON HER WORK

I find interest in capturing the connections we all share in the natural world around us. Driven by contemporary environmental issues and inspired by art history, I want to illuminate the stories of today, while continuing a visual language of the past. Showing that we are all linked through land and time, dependent on each other for the long-term health of our planet.

Since the Industrial Revolution, human expansion and resource consumption has grown, leading many creatures to live within stressed ecosystems. Through climate change and habitat loss, we find ourselves affecting the wellbeing of plants, animals and the wild lands around us. I am interested in how we as humans understand such difficult situations, find solutions, and continue to move forward.

Through the delicacy of porcelain, I am capturing the environmental situations of today, and the physical and emotional weight they contain. With creatures that share hybrid elements of human, animal and plant attributes, my creations share a heightened sense of interconnectedness and precarious balance.  With particular interests in vulnerable species, my focus is in depicting endangered or extinct creatures and the biodiversity found in their habitats.

Pulling from traditions of realism, craftsmanship, and art historical porcelain, I am looking to incorporate these customs of beauty, while also building a contemporary, science-based, environmental narrative of today. A story that reminds us of the importance of our natural spaces, and that all living creatures are connected through a thread of time and a fragile world.

“Nature/Nurture” Installation View, Crystal Morey, Mara Superior, Kardi Parnamets, 2020.

ON NATURE/NURTURE

I grew up in Northern California of the 1980s and 90s, influenced by the movements of free speech, feminism, and living close to the land. My ideas of gender were rooted in feminine strength, connected to the power of nature. As my love for nature, equality, and art have grown, becoming my own, I have realized the historical absence of female voices depicting our bodies and experiences. Now, as a woman and an artist, I want to reclaim the art historical nude with its powerful beauty, relationship to the natural world, and the ability to share a new, contemporary narrative.

Reclaiming the feminine body as containing autonomy, self-determination, and strength are important in my creations. Pulling from traditions of classical beauty and realism, while also using exaggerated gesture and body positivity is very important. I am continually looking to create figures with emotional strength, luscious sexuality, and evocative forms that share a kind of raw power and self-containment.

FC NEWS & STORIES | CRYSTAL MOREY | Nature/Nurture

Crystal Morey, “Replanting: Mountain Lion” 2022, hand-sculpted porcelain, 9.5 x 6 x 8.5”.

On the Replanting Series

“The urban landscape of my daily life is a stark contrast to the mountains and trees of my childhood. My experiences as a child directly inspire my work today. I am interested in the intellectual, emotional and primitive relationship between humans and their environment. I used to consider mankind to be part of «nature» and subject to natural events. I now realize that it is the biggest variable in changing our planet. Over the past hundred years, humans have altered the planet radically. We are now the driving force behind environmental change. These are the ideas I keep in mind when I create.”

— Crystal Morey, 2022

Ferrin Contemporary, Crystal Morey, “Venus on the Waves” 2019 Installation View.

VENUS ON THE WAVES

Venus on the Waves is in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum, and was shown with Boucher’s original panel grouping of six, at the Legion of Honor’s exhibition, “Casanova: The Seduction of Europe”, in 2018. Boucher’s luscious figures embody weightlessness and beauty, some floating amongst the clouds, others rolling in the surf as sea creatures emerge from the water below. Boucher paints a sugary world of decadence and lust that can only exist in thought, one of longing emotion, physical charm, and a romantic natural world.

The inspiration for “Venus on the Waves” is seeded in the contrast we see in Boucher’s lavish world and today’s land of human consumption and environmental destruction.

The weight, turbulence and unease of our changing natural environment with climate change, habitat loss and ocean acidification is felt in the relationship between these porcelain hybrid creatures. They embody our instinct of yearning, searching for an answer and a place of knowledge and rest.  Carried by creatures of the sea, these figures show a narrative of human, plant and animal connection and dependence, one that encourages the cultivation of balance in our changing natural environment.

ON VIEW


HEY! CERAMIQUE.S


Musee de la Halle Saint Pierre

Paris, France

September 20, 2023 – August 14, 2024

FEATURED PAST EXHIBITIONS

The International Ceramic Art Fair (ICAF) is a 10-day celebration of some of the most compelling recent ceramic art, featuring works by emerging and established artists from a wide range of backgrounds, as well as online and in-person programming by artists and curators.

Crystal Morey, "Replanting: White Rhino Airlift" 2020, hand sculpted porcelain, 19 x 12 x 12"

NATURE/NURTURE

Group Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary (North Adams, MA) | 2020 & 2021
Virtual Conference at
NCECA Rivers, Reflections, and Reinvention | 2021

Group exhibition of twelve contemporary female artists invited to explore the influence of gender and its impact on their practice.

Featuring Works from the Venus on the Waves Series

“Nature/Nurture” Installation View, Crystal Morey, Mara Superior, Kardi Parnamets, 2020.

‘Nature/Nurture’, Installation view, 2020.

ESPRITS LIBRES

 June 17, 2022 – April 1, 2023 | Group Exhibition at La Fondation d’Enterprise Bernardaud (Limoges, France)

Featuring Works from Morey’s “Replanting” & “Venus on the Waves” series

BREAKING GROUND: Women in California Clay

September 10, 2022—February 9, 2023 | Group Exhibition at American Museum of Ceramic Art | Pomona California

Assembled together for the first time in Breaking Ground, these works tell the compelling story of how women artists from California made, and continue to make, significant contributions to the American Studio Ceramics movement in profound and singular ways.

View the Exhibition HERE

Crystal Morey, "Replanting: White Rhino Airlift" 2020, hand sculpted porcelain, 19 x 12 x 12"

CRYSTAL MOREY: VENUS ON THE WAVES

Solo Exhibition at Ferrin Contemporary | 2019

As a result of human consumption, climate change, and habitat loss, we are experiencing increased responsibility to care for the living creatures around us. Morey?s delicate porcelain works highlight these precarious connections and our roles as advocates and protectors of our most vulnerable species. Her sculptures narrate the interdependence between humans, plants, and animals while cultivating empathy for our changing world.

Ferrin Contemporary, Crystal Morey, “Venus on the Waves” 2019 Installation View.

Ferrin Contemporary, Crystal Morey, “Venus on the Waves” 2019 Installation View.

Ferrin Contemporary, Crystal Morey, “Venus on the Waves” 2019 Installation View.

CURRENT + RECENT EXHIBITIONS

NEWS & FEATURES


  • Released September 15, 2023
  • Edited by Anne Richard Bilingual (French / English)
  • 250 pages
  • Shaped cover 28 x 24.5 cm
  • Published by HEY! PUBLISHING

Long considered a minor art because of its particular status at the crossroads of art and craftsmanship, ceramics has emancipated itself artistically by making precisely this hybrid position the basis of its renewal. The truly alchemical dimension of the fire arts lends itself wonderfully to blurring and crossing boundaries.

HEY! CÉRAMIQUES Catalog Cover"HEY! CÉRAMIQUE.S" Musee de la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, France, September 20, 2023 to August 14, 2024.

HEY! CÉRAMIQUES Catalog Cover “HEY! CÉRAMIQUE.S” Musee de la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, France, September 20, 2023 to August 14, 2024.

The 8.5 x 11″ booklet includes 16 beautiful pages of images and text from the “Venus on the Waves” exhibition
at Ferrin Contemporary in 2019.

Read more about the exhibition, HERE.

The book also includes a wonderful essay by writer Maria Porges, “Claiming Beauty: Crystal Morey’s Venus on the Waves”.

Excerpt from Maria Porges Essay:

All of Morey’s therianthropes have a kind of contained power, even when their poses might bely such a reading. A closer examination of the passive contrapposto of the standing figures in Three Gracesreveals a kind of watchful alertness. Positioned back to back around a tree stump, they are warriors creating a united defense. Rhino and mountain lion have their arms intertwined, but the gesture looks protective rather than girlishly affectionate. Alert, all three scan the horizon, dependent on each other for safety. As Morey has put it, “The rhino, mountain lion and human are all in danger of habitat loss, and extinction- although the human is just now realizing how delicate her situation is, and how dependent she is on the well -being of the creatures and environments around her.”

Like these three, Morey reminds us, all living creatures are connected. Multiple-figure compositions– a first for her—have enabled her to address increasingly complex issues. The result is a body of work in which several different meanings can be slowly unpacked, even as the immediate physical appeal of the figures provides pleasure. “You can come in at whatever level you want, but hopefully it will make you think about something you haven’t previously considered… I don’t know if this work will make a change, but I hope it instigates a conversation.”

INQUIRE


 

Additional works may be available to acquire, but not listed here.

If interested in lists of all works and series: Send us a message

Ferrin Contemporary at 1315 MASS MoCA Way

Ferrin Contemporary at 1315 MASS MoCA Way

Housed in Building 13 in an airy building on MASS MoCA’s 16-acre campus in North Adams, Massachusetts, Ferrin Contemporary’s year-round location is only a short walk from the museum’s front door. Specializing in contemporary ceramic art and sculpture, the gallery offers selected works for sale by represented artists, masterworks from private collections, and curated exhibitions.  Also located in the building are other galleries, The Studios at MASS MoCA and The Artist Book Foundation.

EXHIBITIONS

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