Peter Frank, “Artist Tackles Social, Political Issues,” Long Beach Press Telegram (Entertainment section), July 11, 1993.

“Santa Barbara-based artist Holly Crawford is best known for her skill full and sensitive abstract paintings.

When those paintings began to make metaphorical references to environmental concerns a few years ago, Crawford realized that, however she might try to retreat into her studio, the outside world was going to follow her. So, she figured, if you can’t avoid it, tackle it head-on.

Since then, Crawford has not only continued to paint her ‘environmental abstractions,’ but has begun to address directly some of the news in the headlines. But, where other ‘engaged’ artists deal with national and international issues, Crawford turns to local news.

Unlike her fellow sociopolitical artists, she offers no direct judgments on the things that concern her. Rather she puts together disparate objects and materials in attempts to have us understand straightforward information—information which in its technical intricacy and mass of detail would otherwise go right over our heads.

Crawford does embellish the straight information with other data, but that data can only broaden our own possible interpretations. What might we make of the fact that a particular year on a documentary timeline carries the notion of that year’s top hit song and/or a few lines of poetry?

More important which might we make of the poetry itself? Here, it turns out, is where Crawford does pass judgment, however obliquely. A few lines of T.S. Eliot is all it takes to give a grim, apocalyptic cast to an installation documenting the recent history of water use in our state. And quotations from Homer, Blake, Kerouac, and Time magazine accompany each year of the 20-year timeline mapping the history and topography of the latest freeway project.

Running right through Downey, Bellflower, Compton and other local towns, the Century Freeway will significantly affect in the South Bay when it is completed. Indeed, it has already made its impact, and not just on rush-hour traffic patterns. Many people have lost their jobs due to the displacement of their employers by the road. Many tax dollars have been spent on planning and legal studies since 1959, when the freeway was first proposed.

Crawford’s ‘Road: Century Freeway Project,’ charts the history of the freeway year by year since 1972, when a class action suit was filed on behalf of various groups—form the Sierra Club and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to four couples living in the right of way—who objected to the freeway plan. Notabably, this suit led to hiring and rehousing policies that were reviewed as fairer to minorities and women.

Crawford’s timeline specifically documents the number of housing units built and number of workers trained by the project since 1972; she represents the housing with big nails and the workers with even bigger staples, creating two flowing, if stuttering, patterns across the black paper map of the freeway.

In  ‘Water! Water$ Water?,’ Crawford gives similar representation to the data associated with water allocation and use in California, in fact, while this issue is far more chronologically and geographically broad-reaching than the freeway, Crawford manages to give it even more immediacy. She relies less on verbiage and more on visuals.

On a stretch of wall painted in light blue, Crawford has hung a parade of shower heads. Beneath the shower heads lie piles of grain, rice, and straw, fully or partially painted gold. Anyone at all familiar with the ongoing debate over water in our water scare state will get the symbolism: Agriculture uses most of the water.

Since Crawford’s installations involve a lot of written material, she reached out to one disadvantaged minority by translating the print into braille.

In a different exhibition…”