​John Crowe, The Constant Evolving Present, is a show about artistic practice in coordination with educational practice. John Crowe’s identity as an artist has been irrevocably intertwined with modeling artistic behavior and process over product. As a result of this educational mindset, Crowe’s work is constantly in flux. Always evolving, always giving, the work of John Crowe reflects a life long dedication to his students and an artistic practice that spans decades.

It seems more than appropriate that a John Crowe retrospective would be held in the Arnheim Gallery at Mass Art. Described by his colleagues as a caretaker, innovator and even Holy Man, it seems only right that an institution so touched and shaped by his presence and dedication would take equal care and devotion to honor his life’s work.

The word “work” has a dual meaning in this context. There is the physical presence of the art, and then there is the spiritual, intellectual and educational work that has been the dual legacy of John Crowe. These two aspects of labor are forever fused and cannot be separated. Crowe faced a challenge that every artist-educator faces; how can I balance my educational and artistic practice? Rather than be pulled at both ends, Crowe seamlessly integrated an educational and artistic mindset.

 Many of the pieces in his retrospective have been re worked over decades. For this reason the work presented does not adhere to any sort of chronological organization. This constant re working and retooling is a by-product, or off shoot if you will, of an educator’s constant revision, assessment and reflection of his own teaching practice. The importance of found materials and their transformation, as well as the portability of most of Crowe’s objects, reflects the need to be always creating. An elegant solution to the need to feed an artistic practice as well as a self described, “inability to sit still,” almost all of Crowe’s work incorporates found materials. In these materials he sees a need to nurture, reshape, make beautiful and bestow purpose and a relationship to the rest of the world.

John Crowe received his educational training in the Lowenfeld Model of artistic development. Very much a believer that education in the arts should be a holistic experience, taking into account more than just aesthetics and a building of a skill set. Artistic learning is very much about learning behaviors that foster artistic growth and practice, not focusing on output or standards of quality. This focus on process over product is something Crowe takes into account in his own artistic practice. Individual pieces may be re worked over and over, going through a slow process of change and modification before Crowe considers them complete. In his own words, sometimes it takes a decade.

This concept of comprehensive artistic learning was born out of necessity in Crowe’s early years of teaching in the Brockton school district. Faced with the task of teaching thousands of students with no designated art room, Crowe likened this experience to spinning multiple discs at once at different levels and speeds. This high volume fast paced approach to teaching spilled over into his artistic practice. By making art that was in tandem with his teaching experience, Crowe could balance the two realms of artist and teacher. His studio practice reflected his teaching practice; work was developed over time, always in high volume while working on multiple pieces at once. In a way this practice mirrored his student’s development as well, by having multiple ideas going at once, that needed to be nurtured and developed into realities, which were all at different stages.

It was the work of artists like Howard Hodgkin and Eva Hesse that gave Crowe a sense of permission to follow a path of art making that allowed for a focus on process and materiality. Most importantly, a practice focused on process rather than production allowed for multiple areas of work at once, and it allowed for time. Time to develop a body of work over a lifetime, free from the pressures of a need for a sense of completion and finality.

Colleague and friend, Lois Hetland explained Crowe’s artistic process in relation to teaching best in an interview with Rose Grushkin,

“The point is, you make a mess, then you respond to the mess, and you respond to it again and again, and you keep elevating it to art. That is really what he does. The rigor of his process is, I think invisible at first to his students, but you really see it in his art. You will see that the wooden corners of those calendar pieces match precisely. He gets every corner exact, he makes those wooden dowels, and there are no nails. Everything is so precise, so he really mixes the mess with the precision in quite a beautiful conversation. It comes up in all his work.”[1]

A tenant of Lowenfeld theory is that by extending our frame of reference, we become more informed makers. Crowe extended this belief into his own theories and research in education. A result of his Lowenfeld influence is Crowe’s Theory of Everything, affectionately referred to as Crowe’s TOE. This educational theory supports the idea that learning can be inspired by and driven by all things in our visual, emotional and physical world. The frame of reference for an artist is infinite and all encompassing.

In addition to Crowe’s TOE, Crowe co founded Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB.) [2]Established in 2001, TAB is an innovative classroom structure that allows for student directed and choice based learning, which also supports a Crowe’s TOE approach to education. Teachers respond to individual student needs in a “you choose, I support” role of educator and learner. Crowe’s passion for education is evident in his early work with TAB. Co founder and colleague Kathy Douglas describes his diligence in solidifying TAB as an effective model of teaching,

“Two of our best TAB teachers lost their positions for teaching in a student-centered manner. We realized that we needed to provide more backing for these young teachers.  We were offered an opportunity to create content for the dept of education best practice in education website at Brown University. John put together a graduate course and the students wrote the content which was published on the knowledgeloom.org.  We also revived the Whole Art Partnership idea but called it TAB.  It became an organization with a board of directors, and John was among them.  We would meet periodically to plan advocacy and dissemination of the choice based philosophy.  Over the years the organization has become a major player in art education. While John’s interest in organizational matters is slight, his passionate belief in and skill at understanding the point of good educational practice is great.”[3]

This relationship between student and teacher supports a give and take structure that is evident in Crowe’s artwork. There is a subtle interaction between the art and the viewer, whether it is the compulsion to examine a Trophy in the round or the invitation to change a panel in one of his calendar pieces, there is an element of viewer engagement. Also evident in Crowe’s art is a high level of care and guardianship of the objects he elevates to such a high level of reverence. We see it in his items of inquiry, creating safe spaces for found objects that beg to be both protected and displayed.

This care and attention is what endears John Crowe to his colleagues and students almost immediately. Kathy Douglas states; “To me, John is a visionary, a sort of Holy Man, who, despite that, is thoroughly connected to his students.  When he is with you, everything else falls away from him: he totally focuses on the person in front of him. His attentiveness to his students is a gift to them.”

His capacity to nurture students and friendships spills over into every perceivable aspect of Crowe’s life. A trip to his home in Hull, Massachusetts makes evident the level of intimacy he has with his own practice. For Crowe it is important that the work be experienced, lived with and cared for. Every piece, whether in a beginning stage of process or refined over time has a space to occupy. Trophies go on the mantle, bowling pins on the floor against the wall, small trophies on a shelf next to the bed for further contemplation. These objects need to be observed in their natural state of being in order to be pushed further in the right direction.

Another layer of affinity Crowe feels towards his work is his grouping of individual pieces into families. For example Trophies are a term given to specific sculptures, similar to Robert Rauschenberg’s indexing of his combines. Both Crowe and Rauschenberg created their own artistic taxonomies as a method of documentation, and as a way to organize an expansive process.[4]

Crowe’s method of documentation extends into a cataloging of completeness, or record keeping of progress. Crowe’s system of documentation is not a visual record of progress but a system of categorization that is very much in the present. Crowe has established a hierarchy of percentages, based on an intuitive feeling or realization of a piece’s potential. For example a group of calendar tiles may be at 10%, while another batch are 80%.

A challenge when curating a retrospective of an artistic practice like Crowe’s, is how do you present a body of work that is constantly evolving? When completion is based off intuition, and can literally take decades to achieve, how can we present any work as truly finished? And if we can’t, the question remains, does it matter? The average viewer of John Crowe’s art will mostly likely not be able to distinguish whether a piece is 50% or 100% complete. A trained eye will learn to recognize clues of stages of completeness, such as rubber bands around trophies to indicate another step to be taken. What is important is the process and discovery on the road to completion, and the body of work that is the result of that journey. Just as the importance of an art education is not the final body of finished work, but the behaviors, ideas and perspectives a student gains along the way.

- Karen Beaty

[1] Lois Hetland, Interviewed by Rose Grushkin. February 14, 2013. Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

[2] "Teaching for Artistic Behavior." Web. 02 Mar. 2013. <http://teachingforartisticbehavior.org/>.

[3] Kathy Douglas, interviewed by Rose Grushkin. February 11, 2013. Email interview.

[4] Hopps, Walter. Robert Rauschenberg, a retrospective. Walter Hopps and Susan Davidson ; with essays by Trisha Brown ... [et al.]. 1999

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