Artist Portrait: Ibe Crawley
I
be Crawley reaches into the past by carving into old, reclaimed marble. She releases the whispers of history, not the shouts and dramas of the famous ones. She discovers the voices of those who didn’t have a Artist Ibe Bulinda H. Crawley chance to be heard— the uncelebrated African American women who have raised the children and held society together. Ibe grew up in Danville, Virginia, graduated from VCU in Richmond and has a masters degree in Special Education. Teaching, she discovered, is the art of telling stories that connect the past to the present in ways that children can easily identify with and understand. She combined her love of both history and art and visited schools and museums, telling stories about the proud backbone of America. She assembled her books and teaching materials, “using sticks, stones and bones, recycled or found trea-
A Capitol Hill artist and writer, Jim can be reached at ArtandtheCity05@aol.com
sures.” Ibe has traveled through the South photographing historic shotgun houses—she was raised in one—and has created collages with the pictures to tell the stories. Ibe was first drawn to sculpture, wood sculpture, as a young woman “Carving wood was like sewing; I taught myself to design pictures using wood scraps.” Four years ago, she began teaching herselfto handle marble, adding another element to her storytelling. All of her materials, stone, marble, wood, are reclaimed. A piece of fireplace marble becomes a portrait. An old section of drainage marble becomes a woman and child, supported by the generic presence of a man. “New Girl,” a woman with two children, is from a piece of Baltimore step marble.
Ibe lives ‘Family’, a marble sculpture of a family in motion. with her husband and sons near Capitol Hill and carves in the garden behind her house. In sculpture, and all of her artwork, her heart is in the story of America told through whispered history, the quietly courageous voices of African American women. www.blackartinamerica.com/profile/IbeBulindaCrawley.
Jim Magner’s Thoughts on Art
‘Queen Ester’, collage made of found objects, rusted tin and fine china 84 H HillRag | August 2012
artandthecity
by Jim Magner
Ah yes. As reliable as the tides that lift all boats, the proposals to lift building height requirements in DC are with us again. The historic purpose of the strict height regulations was to let the Capitol building and monuments rise above the rooftops of the commercial and residential structures. And it works. You can see the Capitol and the Washington monument from just about anywhere in the city, or even driving on the Wilson Bridge. From the Virginia side of the Potomac, the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials give the Capitol a special grace. But it is not just a matter of seeing famous landmarks; it‘s about the nature of the town. New York has skyscrapers. New York is skyscrapers. The tallest ones become the city’s monuments to money. As Senator Pat Moynihan once said to me as he swept his hand over the famous skyline, “It’s all about capital.” Money. Washington is not supposed to be about money. It is supposed to be about people and democracy. The city is built on a more human scale, and that‘s on purpose. It’s also about the art of the people—the art in public spaces, and