All posts by HollyCrawford

About HollyCrawford

Holly Crawford, Ph.D. artist, poet and art historian

Silence Drew Off, The Museum is My New Studio

I embroidered, considered to be a craft and not art, during lockdown and later the letters and other material in a scrapbook that my late grandmother created bet1905-07. Many were embroidered and selfie videos were made while I was sitting in a museum, specifically The Metropolitan Art Museum. The specific art museum is not important it is the appropriation of the space that dominated by male artists.

The project was installed Darling Pearls, London in Athens at Platforms in 2022. It is both analog and digital.

Video

The Silence Drew Off, Laughing With Medusa

#1, 2019 monotype with wc

The work deals with power and a myth that celebrates power. The power to rape, abuse and murder.

Medusa was a guardian of Athena’s temple. She was a mortal. She was raped by Poseidon. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, blamed her. And because she allowed herself to be raped she brought shame to Athena and so Athena turned her into a mortal Gordon. Athena than told Perseus how to murder her. She gave birth to Pegasus when she was murdered.

This myth seems current. Has nothing changed. Yes, now with MeToo women are not alone and isolated when something happens to them.

9×12 WC, 2019

They were first created during the Dirty Practice residency, directed by Christian Mieves, at the Art School, University of Wolverhampton, UK July 2019.

#2 WC and pencil (text)

This ongoing series references Medusa and the French Feminist Theory–Laughing with Medusa. There are more than 200 watercolors and colored pencil on archival paper in various sizes.

Three works.

I have added an layer to this work. It is for sale on Artsy, but I will donate 25% of the gross to a charity of the collectors choice. One that help! One that is not in anyway related to the collector. This collaboration will be documented. Why? Because they deal with power to rape, abuse and murder and celebrate that myth.

Installation Cable Depot, UK curated by Alessandra Falbo, Darling Pearls, UK, November 29-February 2. https://www.artsy.net/show/ifac-arts-unicorn-vs-medusa

Exhibition history:

Installation, Darling Pearls, UK. March 14 (opening reception).

Installation of 200+ works, Cable Depot, UK curated by Alessandra Falbo of Darling Pearls, November 29, 2019-February 2, 2020 (In conjunction with 4 video artists around the theme of the unicorn.)

Works is also for sale on Artsy by FIAC and Darling Pearls.

The project continues, 2023- present, sculpture Medusas from porcelain. They’re tiny.

In the Spirit of Art

Installations were  different

2023, Platform, Athens Greece with Doug Harvey and Jeffery Vallance

2015, Turin, Italy Roberta Marroquin

An interactive performance. The installation was in the ex-hospital’s waiting room in Turin.

Turin, Waiting Room, Decommissioned Hospital

I did a 3 tarot card  reading during the fair, using a new and updated tarot cards that I have created for this performance with my photos.  No negative readings.

The large b&w photographs by Roberta Marroquin. The floor was  covered with 10,000 red silk rose pedals. The table will have a long black table cloth and the room had flicking candles.

One of the readings. The person strove to see. Very independent. Currently very excited about life and life will be fruitful and abundant. At least today and tonight.

I’m…who are you? Oh, so sorry, why should anything happen to me?

Test cards and other props for performance in the Research Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, October 1, 2017
Text cards and other props for performance in the Research Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, October 1, 2017

Interactive performance:

  1. The first performance will be October 1, 2017 in  the Research Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Curated by Jeanette Doyle. 
    IMG_0200
    IMG_0265 IMG_0309 IMG_0315 I’m… who are You?  Oh, so sorry.  Why should anything happen, to me.

Issues of “other,” privilege, denial. It’s easy to become other. 

Time: Approximately 20 minutes

2. Performance and Artist Talk, Dirty Art Practice, Art School, University of Wolverhampton, UK,  July 4, 2019.

Performance: I’ll walk around the space, a dimly lighted space, with an old suitcase with high end travel stickers. I’ll be well dressed wearing costume diamond and pearl jewelry.   Maybe I’ll sip some champagne.  I’ll look at the newspaper and drop it. The cards, postcard size, has text one side and images on the front. There will be approximately 80 cards. I’ll look at them and say the text. I will then drop the cards on the floor, toss them or hand them to people. I’ll ask someone  to read one.  During the performance, I will drop some of the jewelry.  Their card will say: (1)  Who are you?, (2)  Why should anything happen, to me, or(3) Oh, so sorry.)

Material and sources:

The images are from photographs and objects that are in the public domain and under CC.  The places and events represented on the cards from things that we try to push to the back of our minds. A history that some deny.  A history that many want to forget. A history that others say is the past. It’s not. 

The images are of fragments of laws, such as the governmental law that removed the Native Americans from lands east of the Mississippi in 1830, the Treaty of Gaudalupe Haldigo Treaty that took the west from Mexico, photographs by Ansel Adams of Japanese Internment camps, Concentration camps, Armenian Holocaust, American segregation poster removed by my grandmother from a train car in Baltimore, and the wall encircling the Palestinians and other images. 

 Most of the text is based on the story of Austrian art Paul Cohen-Portheim who wrote about his experience in a British internment camp during WWI which was part of my research on enemy aliens, but it plays with privilege too.   ( I discovered I  had a great-grandfather who also was caught up by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Who I’m I?  My ancestors are Mennonite,  a McIntyre, Jews and ‘Mulatto.’ The Mennonites were persecuted in Basel, convicted imprisoned and moved to southern Germany, but were only allowed to farm.  I have a McIntyre who was born in NY in 1806.  And many others. 

 

Anxious Object: Enemy Alien Medals From British WW I Internment Camps

Paper was delivered at academic a conference on Art history of Medals at INHA in Paris.

It was recorded but not published. 

This medal and others that were created and made by internees in British internment camps during the first part of WW1 on the Isle of Man.

  Paper:”Anxious Object: Enemy Alien   Medals from British WW 1 Internment Camps,” Art Du Puissant, Objet Multiple: Medailles et Jetons en Europe, De La Renaissance A La Premiere Guerre Mondiale, Colloque International, INHA, Paris 2017.    

This is new information on these medals.

I had inherited this medal and finally researched it.

Ants on a Shrimp, Thoughts

image

Interactive performance on issues of creativity at the Arena Theatre, September 23. It was as part of Dirty Practice, The Role of the Artist’s Studio, Residency and Symposium at  University of Wolverhampton School of Art

The text was broken into 126 text size postcards. The text on one side and collage that I created on the other side. The postcards were gifts for people who attended. During the performance I moved through the audience, snuggled up, and asked them on occasion to read what was on the card. The cards where then handed to them or if I read the card I tossed it at the audience or dropped on the floor.

Selected Text:

Where the hell are we?

….

Let’s have fun.

Everyday is a grind.

Let’s have fun.

…..

We’ll see

Thinker on a Spoon, 2016

Scupture that I I created as part of my Dirty Practice art residency. I also did a performance, Ants of a Shrimp, Thoughts.

One of the small sculptures that I created during this residency. It is deliberately per carelessly balanced, on false move or change and...you get it. It is part of larger installation that I did at the Wolverhampton School of Art, 20-23 Sept 2016
One of the small sculptures that I created during this residency. It is deliberately per carelessly balanced, on false move or change and…you get it. It is part of larger installation that I did at the Wolverhampton School of Art, 20-23 Sept 2016

Installation of 12 tiny sculptures mixe with other mixed media. I created the small sculptures as part of this residency.
Installation of 12 tiny sculptures mixe with other mixed media. I created the small sculptures as part of this residency.

Symblast -Detroit

image

One of my, now many, digital collaged photographs. This one was the first one I did one the plane.  The project was  One Day Art Detroit. I was assigned Gilda Radner and Eat This Detroit.   The entire project was published in the art magazine  t(here) in October/November by there media, NY.

Through the Cell Darkly, Turin 2015

 

Through A Cell in Time & Space Darkly, Prison Cell Installation by Holly Crawford photographs by Roberta Marroquin, Torino Italy, Stay Gold Art Fair
Through A Cell, in Time & Space, Darkly, Prison Cell Installation by Holly Crawford photographs by Roberta Marroquin, Torino Italy, Stay Gold Art Fair

Site specific  art installation in a cell in a former prison at the Others Art Fair, Stay Gold, Turin Italy. The images are from other locations in  the prison.   I created the installation that was changed daily and Roberta Marroquin took the photographs. I draped masses of white string, to appear to me webs, around the cell. Candles were light and the windows were blocked. Only three people at a time were allowed to entire the space with a small flashlight. The two heavy cell doors, that creaked, were then closed behind them. They looked at the space and the pictures of the prison that Marroquin took every night and were added the next day before the fair opened.

We were interviewed several times and congratulated on using the cell as a cell. The prison was open from the late 1880s and closed in the early 2000. There is a long history of the prison that is posted on the next. It is a place filled with ghosts. People lined up to see this site specific installation. Over four long days approximately 1,000 people, that is a minimum number, saw this installation. Thank you!

inside the cell...detail

 

Art Alchemy, the other project listed here is on  separate page. I tried it our here for the first time. It  is a project that I did with people who were waiting in line to see Through the Cell Darkly. 80 people participated and  I transformed a gold envelop and black sealing wax into an art object that I then gifted back to the participants.

Art Alchemy & the Gift Project: Turin, It. 2015, Natlab, Eindhoven, NL 2017 & Platforms, Athens Greece 2019

Art Alchemy and the Gift project…your money, or object,  and my brain created this art object. 80 signed and dated and gifted back to participants in Turin. Stay Gold, Others Art Fair, 2015

Project:

2015: Others Art Fair,  Turn, Italy, 2015

2017: Economia, NatLab   Eindhoven, NL.

2017 & 2018: 1 created in Amsterdam and 1 created in NYC

2019:  Platforms, Athens Greece, 2019

Approximately 175 have been created.

Objects instead of money: ancient coin, engagement ring, bus pass, museum pass, letters–to children, boyfriend and their future self, ring from a grandmother, hair ribbon from a grandmother, receipt, drawing, art postcards and many other things.

Regarding Warhol…Voice Over

Metropolitan Art Museum, NYCThis is an example of my Voice Over Projects.

Metropolitan Art Musem, NYC 9/11/12

(I meet the, now late, Bill Wilson today! We had a great time together.)

 

“Good morning…I’m Tony Campbell…when predicted…Andy is going to feed artists…profound…our time…the way…he …our world…him…every day…perfectly…he was everything and nothing…catalogue and audio guide…interpretations…good, bad, indifferent…thanks…foundations…the curators..richly textured…the Warhol effect…answer questions…to the stage…many hands…conceived five years…a team, four of us…show…five thematic…150 objects…third Warhol…subject matter…not simply commercial…portraiture…different…all of this creates a dialogue…many conversations going on…high quality this questions…what is…consuming images…appropriating..finally…no boundaries…works..sky..youngest artist…Warhol…please enjoy…”
Nowhere to sit, move on and out…keep moving
Campbell Soup Sponsored Lunch, Members Dining Room, 4th Floor