Today I want to feature Crystal Neubauer as this week’s Amplify artist. Unlike the other artists that I’ve featured so far, I haven’t personally met Crystal, but we’ve been friends on social media for a while, and since she is friends of Erin Keane and Amanda Jolley ( both artists I have featured here on the blog), I feel like Crystal and I have been in some of the same circles. Of course, I have been an admirer of her work for quite some time.
Crystal lives in Gurnee, Illinois, but has a studio not too far away at the 16th Street Studios in Racine, Wisconsin. Though she took art classes in high school and enjoyed them, she got away from art as an adult. When she found her way back to creating, Crystal was drawn to collage and though she dabbled in a few other mixed media areas, the possibilities of paper drew her in.
Collage has remained at the heart of her artmaking, and Crystal combines her love of old and discarded items with this paper art form. Old maps, documents, cardboard packaging, book covers, pamphlets, and other vintage papers and ephemera all find their way into her work as she tears and cuts them to create large and small abstract collages. The colors of her materials shine through creating the color scheme and the contrast in the work.
However, Crystal hasn’t confined her work to just paper and flat, two-dimensional work. She has also repurposed pieces of wood, found discs, large metal hoops, and other objects, often combining them with paper and collage to create three-dimensional assemblages like her recent shields series which explore the ways that people tend to shield and protect themselves.
Crystal also explores the use of encaustic wax with her work, often combining it with the collage materials and assemblages and giving her pieces a completely different tactile sensation. She has recently taken the use of wax to a new level and begun using the burning of beeswax candles as part of her process in pieces that have sacred and spiritual themes.
Like so many artists, Crystal shares her work with others exhibiting her work in her Racine studio, but she is also represented by Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona and Gallery IMA in Seattle, Washington. She teaches a wide variety of classes and workshops at her studio, as well as at venues through out the country, and now in the time of this pandemic, she is teaching an online workshop through Facebook. Along with these workshops, Crystal shares tips, techniques, and ideas in her book The Art of Expressive Collage.
I continually find inspiration in Crystal and her work, and I always get a sense of history, time, and memory from her pieces, and I also get the feeling that I am looking at work that is deeply personal and sacred. I hope to one day take a class with her, and I hope that you have enjoyed this little peek at Crystal’s world.
To learn more about Crystal and to see more of her work, make certain to check out her website and social media channels.
Website: www.crystalneubauer.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/crystalneubauerartist
Instagram: www.instagram.com/crystalmarieneubauer
Blog: www.otherpeoplesflowers.blogspot.com