Recipient Information
Location
Lexington, Kentucky
Medium
Sculpture
Year of Award
2022
Grant or Fellowship
Southern Prize and State Fellowship
Grant Amount
$5,000
Artist Statement
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.
Formally, my work takes shape through a pallet of building materials either paired with or mimicking textiles. I found a tension between materials like concrete and the structural patterns of cloth. By pairing these seemingly opposite worlds together I invert material stereotypes, using the ‘delicate’ material to exhibit strength or exposing the ‘structural’ materials’ instabilities. These gestures allow for a reinterpretation of material identities leaving the viewer to confront their understanding of these everyday utilities.
Biography
Crystal Gregory 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. In 2013 she was awarded The Leonore Annenberg Fellowship for the Performing and Visual Arts. With this grant she 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 Crossover at Black and White Project Space. Gregory’s work has been reviewed in publications such as Hyperallergic, Surface Design Journal, Art Critical, and Peripheral Vision Press. Gregory is an Associate Professor within the School of Arts and Visual Studies at the University of Kentucky and currently shows with Tappan Collective in Los Angeles, CA; Imlay Gallery; and Momentum Gallery, NC.
Shifting Center
Year: 2019
Medium: handwoven textile cast in concrete
Size (h x w x d): 3ft x 5ft
These works are material paintings, they hang on the wall and invite the viewer toexperience them as an abstract painting of brightly colored lines and meandering grids.Yet they ask more of their viewing in their materiality, their utilitarian history, theirsurface and their texture.
Describing Place 1
Year: 2019
Medium: handwoven textile cast in concrete
Size (h x w x d): 32in x 42in
These works are material paintings, they hang on the wall and invite the viewer toexperience them as an abstract painting of brightly colored lines and meandering grids.Yet they ask more of their viewing in their materiality, their utilitarian history, theirsurface and their texture.
Articulations of Space
Year: 2019
Medium: handwoven textile cast in concrete
Size (h x w x d): 8.5ft x 6ft
These works are material paintings, they hang on the wall and invite the viewer toexperience them as an abstract painting of brightly colored lines and meandering grids.Yet they ask more of their viewing in their materiality, their utilitarian history, theirsurface and their texture.
Shapes of Stillness and Force 1
Year: 2020
Medium: knit silk embedded with pewter, cast in concrete
Size (h x w x d): 24in x 18in
This series combines knit silk with cast pewter embedded in concrete. Unlike wovencloth, a knit textile uses a looped structure system, creating a semi two-dimensionalplane (fabric) out of a single line (thread). Each loop depends on the stability of itsneighbor for durability and support, and when linked together make up a system that isincredibly strong as well as pliable and flexible. Once the knit is whole, molten pewteralloy is introduced. When heated the metal alloy takes the form of its surroundings andmeanders through the individual loops of the knit cloth, cooling, hardening andprovoking the knit to become inflexible. Finally, these gestures are embedded intoconcrete giving the piece weight, permanence and stillness.
Event of a Thread
Year: 2020
Medium: Video
The three components comprising The Event of the Thread are seemingly simple: whiteconstruction scaffolding, concrete tubes, and hand-woven textiles. The installation’scomplexity comes from connections and interactions between these materials changingover time, and reflects Crystal Gregory’s deep thinking about these materials’ individualcharacteristics and their interactions when arranged together. More than just a staticsculpture, Gregory will regularly rearrange the installation to reveal new aspects of thework. Each posture or state of the installation shifts relationships of weight, support,tensile strength, and compression. Over the length of the exhibition these changingrelationships reveal a choreography of movement, action, maintenance, and utility.
On January 25th, Gregory collaborated with the dance company The Moving Architectsto add the moving human body to the composition with their original choreography. Thisperformance can be seen in the accompanying video.
Event of a Thread
Year: 2020
Medium: handwoven, scaffolding, concrete, 13min performane
Size (h x w x d): 20ft x 10ft x 12ft
The three components comprising The Event of the Thread are seemingly simple: whiteconstruction scaffolding, concrete tubes, and hand-woven textiles. The installation’scomplexity comes from connections and interactions between these materials changingover time, and reflects Crystal Gregory’s deep thinking about these materials’ individualcharacteristics and their interactions when arranged together. More than just a staticsculpture, Gregory will regularly rearrange the installation to reveal new aspects of thework. Each posture or state of the installation shifts relationships of weight, support,tensile strength, and compression. Over the length of the exhibition these changingrelationships reveal a choreography of movement, action, maintenance, and utility.
On January 25th, Gregory collaborated with the dance company The Moving Architectsto add the moving human body to the composition with their original choreography. Thisperformance can be seen in the accompanying video.
Event of a Thread
Year: 2020
Medium: handwoven, scaffolding, concrete, 13min dance
Size (h x w x d): 20ft x 10ft x 12ft
The three components comprising The Event of the Thread are seemingly simple: whiteconstruction scaffolding, concrete tubes, and hand-woven textiles. The installation’scomplexity comes from connections and interactions between these materials changingover time, and reflects Crystal Gregory’s deep thinking about these materials’ individualcharacteristics and their interactions when arranged together. More than just a staticsculpture, Gregory will regularly rearrange the installation to reveal new aspects of thework. Each posture or state of the installation shifts relationships of weight, support,tensile strength, and compression. Over the length of the exhibition these changingrelationships reveal a choreography of movement, action, maintenance, and utility.
On January 25th, Gregory collaborated with the dance company The Moving Architectsto add the moving human body to the composition with their original choreography. Thisperformance can be seen in the accompanying video.
Weight in a Field of Color
Year: 2021
Medium: cotton and ballchain
Size (h x w x d): 5th- 11th floor
Completed in December of 2021 for the Credit Human building San Antonio, Weight ina Field of Color, consists of seven 30 foot weavings cascading from the 11th to the 5thfloor. Each textile incorporates stainless steel ball chain into brightly colored cottonwarps, adding weight to the valley of each drape. The utilitarian history of the metal ballchain is elevated to an elegant material, catching and reflecting light.
Weight in a Field of Color
Year: 2021
Medium: cotton and ball chain
Size (h x w x d): 5th- 11th floor
Completed in December of 2021 for the Credit Human building San Antonio, Weight ina Field of Color, consists of seven 30 foot weavings cascading from the 11th to the 5thfloor. Each textile incorporates stainless steel ball chain into brightly colored cottonwarps, adding weight to the valley of each drape. The utilitarian history of the metal ballchain is elevated to an elegant material, catching and reflecting light.
Weight in a Field of Color
Year: 2021
Medium: cotton and ball chain
Size (h x w x d): 5th- 11th floor
Completed in December of 2021 for the Credit Human building San Antonio, Weight ina Field of Color, consists of seven 30 foot weavings cascading from the 11th to the 5thfloor. Each textile incorporates stainless steel ball chain into brightly colored cottonwarps, adding weight to the valley of each drape. The utilitarian history of the metal ballchain is elevated to an elegant material, catching and reflecting light.