GREEN INTERIOR DESIGN  SERVICES

Carol Crawford's practice as a designer combines with her work as a professional fine artist, allowing her to bring a broad spectrum of aesthetic experience and understanding to her design projects.  Her creative work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions in art galleries and museums in the United States, Canada, Japan and Europe. She has taught studio art, art history and interior design at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at Stanford University in California, Queens College and Queensborough Community College/C.U.N.Y., in New York City.  

Since 1998 she has been on the faculty of Pratt Institute's Department of Interior Design, Brooklyn, New York, where she teaches classes in Color and Materials, and Sustainable Design on the graduate and undergraduate levels. 

Carol earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree magna cum laude from the University of Buffalo [S.U.N.Y.] with a major in painting; a Master of Arts in Art History from Columbia University's Graduate Faculty of Philosophy, where she specialized in African Art as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow; and a Master of Science from Pratt Institute where she won an Outstanding Merit Award in interior Design.

Carol Crawford Environments,Inc. was established in 1997, and provides a broad range of design services including consulting and project management. Ms. Crawford is a New York State Certified Interior Designer and LEED AP.

DESIGNER'S STATEMENT:

"I ACT AS AN ADVOCATE FOR MY CLIENTS:  I take very seriously the role I agreed to when I became licensed by the State of New York as a Certified Interior Designer: 'to design for the health, safety and well-being of the public".  This means that educating and guiding, protecting against fraud and poor workmanship or bad decisions, and looking out for my clients' best interests...not only pleasing them...is as much a part of my practice as is aesthetics. 

One of the greatest pleasures of creating a beautiful, functional interior is knowing that those who live and work in it will be happier and healthier because of it."

A BRIEF PICTORIAL HISTORY & ARCHIVE of CAROL CRAWFORD'S FINE ART WORK :  from 2-D to 3-D

"My years of figurative painting, lithography, drawing and photography evolved into mixed media constructions in a sudden visual "epiphany" during a cross-country flight.  It was a brilliant, sunny day at 40,000 feet over Colorado when I looked down, out of the airplane's window, and saw, with new insight, the transparent layers of cloud formations, each scudding in its own direction and pattern across the earth below.  I began to make tiny sketches  on a cocktail napkin...how could I capture what I saw  and communicate the depth and complexity in a work of art?  Layers.  Depth.  It had to be in three dimensions, not two.

"From that moment on, my focus was on re-creating and interpreting the three-dimensional world: how we physically perceived it, focusing layer-by-layer, penetrating into it.  It was so palapable an experience to share, that mere illusion painting would not satisfy.  The life-sized figurative drawings I had been doing were already ripped out of context and floated on their walls, encased in plexiglas forms, casting their own shadows.  They shared in the same phenomena of life as their viewers, often appearing to move as the viewer passed by and turned to look at them.  Now it was imperative that I begin to build out into real space, from the flat images.  Instead of trapping a moment in time, the works shared the moment in real time.

"Small space containers, painted on all surfaces, extending the photo image into artist-controlled space, grew into entire sets and installations in which dancers and actors moved.    I began to use a wide variety of materials, whatever best carried the metaphor I wanted to develop: thermoplastic, metal mesh, aircraft aluminum, wood, acrylics.  Any medium was an option: photography, paint, monoprint, engraving, projections, light, movement..  With the support of numerous grants, I collaborated with actors , musicians and dancers to create original theater pieces; my sculptural work grew into life-size installations .

"From there, it was just another step into the world of interior design: the creation of functional, as well as evocative, interior spaces in which real people could live and work."

Carol Crawford, 2007

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CITY VISIONS: aluminum mesh and rods built into 3-D sculptural screens to "catch" original projected images of New York City; funded with grant from Queens Council on the Arts; developed as a setting for "Memory Ghosts", an original dance theater piece choreographed by Sheila Kaminsky; shown in Queens Museum, QCC Gallery & Theater, and performed in various other venues on tour in New York City and State; Connecticut; and the Edinburgh Festival, Scotland.