Meredith Morrison’s solo exhibition, “Dreamwork,” focuses on the meditative aspect of her bead-working practice as the focus to slowly create what she refers to as “meditation cloths.“ Until recently, her work has been firmly rooted in memory, archiving or the preservation materials she finds significant.
Her latest series of work deviates from this by focusing on the meditation and process to slowly build these meditation cloths, rather than the manipulation of significant materials. The use of transparent beads references the loss of information within memory landscape, as they simultaneously crystallize the information reflected upon.
These large-scale cloth sculptures serve as markers or shrines, fleeting phantoms of time and space— unresolved fractured figments that while missing information, still hold energy that is poured into them through her rumination. As objects they are unable to communicate the memory that has been reflected over, but through the investment in the ritual action of beading and meditation, they themselves become vessels, phantoms, and testaments to what cannot be outwardly expressed.
As memory shifts, the cloths also shift in each installation— never hanging in quite the same way as once before.I utilize the meditative practice of beadwork to slowly build these cloths. Within this context, time is suspended and I can contemplate collisions of lived experience, human connection, future desires, and all that exists in between. By momentarily allowing myself to perceive the world non-cyclically and embrace non fixity, I am able to give care and attention to those things and create objects that are reflective of both truth and figment.” – Meredith Morrison
Morrison’s work is informed by her love for craft and development of processes, however she also utilizes design-thinking strategies to create the hardwares and fasteners to display these beaded cloths. “My time spent as a designer in the home furnishings industry heavily influences the way I approach object-making. It is because of this background that I oscillate between fast and slow methods of building, using hand craft, manufacturing and production technologies.” For example, she utliizes both hand-beaded work and machine embroidery work, as well as metal and resin mold fabrication, in addition to lasercutting and hand-printing.
Her memory landscapes are supported with furniture forms and fixtures that reference home and domesticity to enhance the presentation of sites of intimacy and vulnerability. “By creating sculptures that approach liminality, I rely on composite assemblage methods that seek to generate an object that feels both familiar and foreign. Existing somewhere between the archive and preservation, these sculptures acknowledge the fleeting nature of time and utilizes reflection as a space to generate future relics. The objects work together to create an affective space of memory markers or metaphorical portals that honor the transient nature of life and embrace the romance of non fixity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Meredith Morrison (b. 1989) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice seeks to negotiate and sustain memory-material relationships. Morrison’s work is process-based and experimental, embedding itself in traditional fiber and craft techniques. She often calls upon intuition, meditative labor, and repetition to collect and build beaded cloths and designed objects in a systematic composition.
In 2013 Morrison received her BA in Art + Design, concentrating in Fiber, and a BS in Textile Technology from North Carolina State University. Influenced by the economy of her home state of North Carolina, and the complicated overlapping of agriculture and textile labor she moved to Chicago, Illinois in 2013 to pursue liaison building between art, craft, and the textile industry.
After honing design skills in home furnishings and textile product design she traded the efficiency and scale of manufacturing to consider the slow, hand-building techniques of embellishment. In 2021, she completed her MFA in Fiber at Cranbrook Academy of Art, focusing in beadwork and object building. She has since rooted her studio in Detroit, Michigan where she continues to collect and respond to the material attachments of the Midwest.
