Crystal Morey

Artist Statement:

My intention is to explore human emotion and its relationship to our natural world. While studying the tenuous, symbiotic balance between human necessities and the health of our habitat, I have combined my impulse and drive to create with my thoughts of the world and its curious progression. I explore changes to the environment and how it influences our psyches, body language, and attitudes towards life. In particular, I’m fascinated in those poignant, articulate moments of beauty, found through stress, that are able to re-form ideas in unexpected ways. By revealing these delicate thoughts I hope to expose the fragility in our coalition with the earth and the balance that is needed in order for life to continue.

Crystal Morey grew up in the forests and mountains of the Northern California gold country. Gifted with an active imagination, she has always been a maker and spent her childhood knitting, baking, painting, drawing, and sculpting. In her work today, you can see a love for the handmade and well-crafted that has been with her from a young age.

The influence of this rural upbringing is mixed with the urban environment where she now lives to create work that is about what happens when the two spaces intersect. Neither a condemnation of the human impact on the world or a celebration of man's “progress,” she speaks of a reality that is much more nuanced and not as easily packaged into a simple summary.

Crystal studied at the California College of the Arts where she received a BFA with honors. Working primarily in sculpture, she has remained in Oakland, though she tries to visit the countryside frequently.