Meredith Cravey: Statement
During the pandemic , I considered the idea of adaptation, the virus required me to change almost every aspect of my life. How was I to adapt to this unexpected way of life and how would I make it work? I searched for any means of sculpting while being limited to my home during the lockdown. I've always enjoyed working through a process of experimentation, testing and improvising.These processes allowed me to focus on materiality. Through this experimentation, I discovered that sugar was a potential material to use for my art making pratice,and my body was a means to mould plaster. Using natural materials that are sugar and plaster, allow for me to partially remove myself from their own internal processes; turing from liquids to solids becuase of a variety of external factors.Because they are natural materials, they introduce an element of the unknown - I don't know how they will react with other environmental factors. Artificial matericals allow for too much prescription and predictability. I have been preoccupied by the degree to which randomness was an integral part both of my creative activity and of the life of the work itself. The nature of the sugar is to change, in both a natural and controlled way. sugarcane to molasses, to granulated sugar, then melted, cooled and allowed to cool completely into a form that is dictated by surrounding forms (plaster). Humidity affects the hardened sugar causing it to melt once again, allowing it to return to its early form that is molasses.