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Lori Crawford

Dover

Established
Visual Arts: Interdisciplinary

By: Gail Obenreder

“I enjoy knowing that tomorrow is a new day. I enjoy starting afresh with the hope of discovery and inspiration.”

Lori Crawford has been creating artworks for almost three decades now, but her most recent work is a tectonic shift for the artist in several ways. Changes in the world we inhabit, including extreme weather patterns caused by climate change, have evoked changes in her relationship to just about everything around her. But rather than give in to fright and grief, “I am determined to channel those emotions creatively.”

The Dover resident grew up in Mount Rainier, Maryland (just outside of Washington DC), but she has lived, worked, and taught in Delaware for over 25 years. Crawford has “always been an artist,” her training primarily in digital work, but “I have always painted.” She was inspired early on by the work of Jacob Lawrence, whose seemingly simple Migration series actually “captured complexities . . . with a limited color palette.” Recently, the artist has added photography to her practice, “making the jump into interdisciplinary work.”

This changing state of the planet has caused Crawford to “highlight this ever-worsening phenomenon while expanding my own artistic practice.” She decided to repurpose and reuse both materials she has accumulated over the years and discarded works she once considered unsatisfactory. These resulting multimedia works garnered Crawford her latest Division award; she also won an Established Fellowship in 2008.

For Tours of Europe with a Climate Map, Crawford collaged sevaral photo album images from her travels and merged them with a painted heat map view of Europe. The two pieces are connected by an acrylic case where the viewer must peak around the photographs to see the map below. Her environmental concerns were brought into focus and motivated by the work of Delaware native Bryan Stevenson, a human rights activist who fights for climate justice. As a tribute, she combined painting and photography to create On Sacred Ground: Walk in the Shoes of Bryan Stevenson.

An arts educator and tenured professor at Delaware State University, Crawford also loves music, “I listen to a lot of blues when I work . . .  soulful music with meaningful lyrics” by artists like Etta James, Nina Simone, and Nancy Wilson. The songs help her through the emotional toll of her subject matter and the challenges of working in a small home studio. Crawford rents larger spaces when her work requires it, but “otherwise, I just make do.”

Lori Crawford has had ten solo exibitions and participated in several dozen group shows over the course of her career, and her positive, forward-thinking attitude continues to motivate her in creating her latest “living” collection, EnvironMENTAL JUSTice Mercy. Most of these pieces are meant to be viewed as diptychs, with peeled-back photographs overlaying abstracted acrylic paintings.

Crawford plans to use her award funds to secure off-site studio space and acquire the upgraded equipment and supplies needed to carry on this major project. This climate project will also require some U.S. travel to capture new sceneries. She is “deeply moved to have been awarded this Fellowship,” knowing that it validates the importance of her work and practice.

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