Open Adoption for Art

Some images from my newly finished paintings from my "looking for a good enough mother" attachment series have been inserted here. --Holly Crawford, August 2009

Series of paintings that I started in 2003 that are based on engraved marks found in old postage stamps. The marks were made by an unknown artists long ago and they were collected by my father. I paint them in any colors and sizes that I choose. I have done about 30 paintings. Some of these painting were exhibited in Pool Art Fair in an installation and project: Open Adoption for Art. If you signed a contract you could adopt the painting for a year. You needed to name the work and return it.
On my 5th birthday my parents gave me a little iron and washing machine. What do you do with this? I washed the lines out of my older brothers notebook paper very carefully, pressed it with the little iron than never even got warm and hung the sheets on a litttle clothes line. I then had my own paper to make my marks.

What is a feminist art now?

What do you see? What do you want to see?


connection

collaborations

unexpected collaboration

participatory

reluctant participant

The first participation/installation/relational that I did was in May 1983 at the FutureWorld Expo in Los Angeles. (This was also my first public art exhibit. And I failed to send out press releases. And I didn't document it either. I just wanted to do it.) There was a lunch I had to miss. My husband was a partner at Jones Day and one of the wives asked me why, "I was just painting." I wasn't I was asking you to do something and think about it. I had a booth. It was about future art. I called it "art in the future." It was free. Anyone could participate. I installed a 3 panel screen. The frames were wrapped in canvas. People could work on both sides. It was blank. I had markers, spray paint, pastel, and acrylic paint. The first person to make a mark was an architect. The more marks the more that were made--drawings, signatures, works. I would mask off places and paint some blank. Near the end of the third day I removed what I had masked off.

found and finding

situations

objects

sounds

people

places

your life

At the Futureworld Expo I mostly talked to people about art and they talked to me. My second cousin--Ellen--came by with her son. I had not told her I would be there. She was about 8 years older. Years before when I was very young, I though she looked a lot like Jane Fonda. She was very pretty. Several years later she killed herself. Why? No answer. She never seemed unhappy, but she took a handgun and went into a closet in her house and shot herself. Her mother is now died. Her father died years before.

Did Buckminster Fuller wander by and make his mark? Maybe. He did wander by. Does it make any difference. The project does not exist anymore. I destroyed it in the 90s. I did not take any photographs. I almost never take pictures. How will I ever become a 'great' artist. Not enough documentation. I don't have any of Ellen either.

relations? who? relational, how?
unplanned collaborations and connections
different media
the performative exchange across visual, verbal and experiential disciplines
institutions
situations
behavior


LAYER UPON LAYER:

Artist, curator, art historian, behavioral scientist and economist, aunt, wife, daughter, sister, friend, lover, employer, founder, leasor, owner, seller, buyer, maker