Jeff Crawford

Jeff Crawford specializes in metal arts, fabrication, and welding and conducts iron pours in the Southeast, USA.

He received his MFA in Sculpture from Florida State University and his BFA in Sculpture from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Currently, he is an Art Technician at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. 

Crawford is quite versed in many materials, although metal has become central to his recent work. His metal sculpture Writhe is currently in a group exhibition, 2020 Situational Invitational, Western Cast Iron Art Alliance. Now, he is expanding this series for future exhibitions. In 2019, Crawford restored Jim Sanborn’s Cyrillic Projector, a public metal artwork for The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, (UNCC). In 2018, Crawford led a public iron pour and taught Foundry practices at UNCC, invited by Associate Professor of Sculpture Marek Ranis from the Department of Art & Art History.  He has also been an active member of Alabama Arts casting since 2005.

In 2016, Crawford reconstructed renowned sculptor Robert Rauschenberg’s Tracer for American dance choreographer Paul Taylor’s Taylor 2 dance company. The 1962 Rauschenberg/Taylor collaboration was lost for four decades. Mr. Paul Taylor, Sotheby’s, and the Rauschenberg Foundation approved Crawford to re-create the work for the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company for national performances. The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ArtWorks grant. 

When speaking about the reconstruction, NY Times critic Alastair Macaulay noted, “Because that wheel is attributed to Rauschenberg, it became the most valuable element of “Tracer” — and until this reconstruction, almost the only part to survive. A few years ago, Mr. Taylor sold the original… Taylor 2 uses instead a super-right replica by Jeff Crawford.”  In 2017, Crawford’s reconstruction was selected for presentation for the Rauschenberg Retrospective Among Friends at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). 

In 2015, Crawford was the Mint Museum project manager for the installation of Mel Chin’s Sea to See. In 2009-2012, Crawford worked as a fabricator and the head of the paint and restoration department for sculptor John Henry, Chattanooga, TN.