Delicate Dependency: Gray Wolf and White Oak

Crystal Morey takes inspirations from an alternative upbringing where she closely connected with the natural landscape around her. Living in rural Northern California shaped her perspective on nature and how humans interact with land, animals and each other. Now living in an urban environment, Morey aims to show our relationship to the world around us through the fragile medium of porcelain. With this delicate material she creates a heightened sense of urgency and stress, commenting on our human evolutionary path. Morey received her BFA in Ceramic Sculpture from the California College of the Arts and her MFA in Spatial Art from San Jose State University. Her work has been included in many publications and online periodicals such as 500 Figures in Clay, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Beautiful Surface, Beautiful Decay and Sculpture Review. Morey has been an artists in residence at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Art, Penland School of Craft and the LH Project. Morey lives in Oakland, California where she is a full time studio artist, exhibiting her work in galleries and museums regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Delicate Dependencies is an exploration of these ideas shown through plants and animals native to the western United States. These creatures exist in habitats stressed or impacted by human activity, leading them to an unclear future. They inhabit a space where the relationship between humans, and the plants and animals around them, are intricately and physically bound together, dependent on each other for their long-term viability. Sculpted from the silken white earth of porcelain, I see these delicate figures as containing power, as modern talismans and precious telling objects. They see a heightened vision of human influence in the natural world and are here to remind us of our current trajectory and the delicate dependencies we all share.