MFA Painting, Room 300H

@m.tenneyfree

meredithtenneyfree.com

“Preserving",” 8" x 8" x 8” , Recycled paper

Meredith investigates reciprocal relationality between humans and the earth through the process ofdecomposition. Our cells are freely rented to us for a short period of time on the ever-morphous journey of matter through the universe — never created, never destroyed, only transformed. Death, so often seen as the end, is a beginning; it is the darkened stage rearranged by shadowed figures between scenes in a play. Perhaps, you were once part of a tree, or perhaps a tree was once part of you? In this polytemporal mingling of humans, land, and matter, grief becomes a framework for preservation, rather than mourning a loss. Grief is an embodied invitation to watch death have its perfect work: an irresistible recreation that always subsumes loss into new life.

Meredith’s practice takes her out of the studio to work on site, or to forage for natural and foundmaterials. Currently, her practice is centered around paper recycling and silk ecoprinting. Creating through layers of application and removal, she utilizes observational realism alongside sculpting, wilting, and burning, to form images from loss. Within the studio, no object has a fixed function; everything is recomposed, repurposed, reoriented to the day’s task. The studio is always in stages, sprouting, growing, wilting, dying, creating good fertilizer for the next spring growth. Some things are annuals, growing and dying in one project; Somethings are perennials, coming back with regularity.