Sheila Crider

Art work of Washington-based, Sheila Crider, in an exhibition entitled “Construction Work 2005” which is a series exploring collage and texture through process.

Specializing in works on paper, canvas and cloth, Ms. Crider grew up in the historic Congress Heights section of SE Washington, where she currently works and resides.  Working as an artists’ model, she began research in the early 80’s on the pictorial properties of poetry.  From 1985 through 1991 in Bordeaux, France she continued this research, shifting her concentration from literary to visual language.  

Ms. Crider has received grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, has exhibited in the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, GA from 1998 thru 2003, was awarded an NEA fellowship to work at the Vermont Studio Center, and was nominated for a Tiffany Foundation Award.

Her works are included in The African American Museum in Dallas, TX, DC Commission on the Arts “Art in Public Places” Collection, Yale University Artists Book Collection, The James E. Lewis Museum in Baltimore, The Corcoran Gallery and The Wilson Building Collection in Washington, DC, Mino Washi Paper Museum in Japan and the Ranger Italia Corporate Collection in Italy.

Academically my work involves combining the varied languages of modern art movements (in particular, abstract painting and minimalism) to make cohesive contemporary pictures.  I isolate then combine two or more of these ideas: texture, pattern, line, color, form and sequence.  As often as not, methodology is the subject.

Intellectually, philosophically and physically, these ideas are for me a foundation to “picture-making” a way of using western concepts and execution to explore the role of “art” and aesthetics as referenced in traditional African and Asian societies.