Crystal Hartman

Fur

Alpaca Foving
2021

A very long rope braided beside the fire and twisted into a basket. They say that hair holds stories and I believe we must tend to our stories, choose them wisely and share the good ones in times of darkness.

Shadow from the Front window in December.

Turf

Acrylic, chalk, charcoal, gouache, and pencil on canvas
2021

I am collecting stories from the edges of the shadows. The late night shadows that form through the blinds and streetlights when we cannot sleep. The midday shadows we find when we escape our homes and lay beneath the trees, the lack of shadows in a landscape parched by years of drought, the subtlety of shadows in the soft winter light.Meeting the abstract with a formalism guided by an appreciation for lines, nature, figure (botanical, entomological, and mammalian), ritual, and the act of gathering rooted in shared evolutionary histories, these collections and renderings are jumping off points for contemplating the humanity within our divergent perspectives. I find these studies to flourish in the dark months, the times when we are living mostly in shadows.

The Gift

Acrylic, chalk, charcoal, gouache, and pencil on canvas
2021

I used to share the afternoons with Steve, an old, wise man who lived at the fish ponds up the road from my house on Lightner Creek. When Steve died my days became quiet and the winter evenings a little bit colder. But he left me his chair and one day, I traced its shadow and reflected on our memories, the darkness and shadows of shared experience.

Crystal Hartman (b. April 9, 1983, Durango Colorado) is a multidisciplinary artist, jeweler, and advocate for the natural world. Her work has been exhibited and published globally since 2005 at locations such as the Center for Contemporary Arts Barcelona, Spain and the National Palace of Culture, Sofia Bulgaria. After studying printmaking at The University of Colorado at Boulder, Hartman began her career exhibiting experimental video installation and filming amateur and professional skateboarding in Spain. Her paintings, recognized with the Merwin Altfeld Memorial Award for Storytelling in the Arts, can be found at Jackson Junge Gallery in Chicago IL, April-May of 2023 during her first solo show, on a sheet of ice a flower. Hartman often publishes with independent literary and arts journals and designs covers of books and albums. Her botanical jewelry designs, carved of sustainably-harvested beeswax and ethically cast in fine metals, can be found in select galleries and boutiques nationally. She maintains a studio in Urbana Illinois.

Website: crystalhartman.com