Biography

     Spencer Crews was born in Charleston, SC in 1989. Having issues with numbers she was diagnosed with dyslexia that ended up causing her to repeat the 1st grade. After attending a poor public school for 4 years her parents were able to place her in a private catholic school where she was instantly an outsider due to being overweight and shy. Eventually she got into cross country running using her inner strength and voice she developed a confidence from being able to rely on and coach herself. She was always known to be very artistic but did not tap into her love to create until high school when she had the opportunity to take a ceramics class.

 

After taking another year of advanced ceramics she decided to attempt to make art her full time job so she applied to Brevard college in North Carolina, known to have an encouraging art program. Growing up in the low country Spencer found the Appalachian Mountains to be quite breath taking and inspiring. Majoring in art concentrating on sculpture she found a passion for working with wood, metal, and ceramic. Never having any formal training, she found it to be discouraging at first. Then she began to focus and this drive led her to winning “ Best of Show” in 2012 her junior year for a fabricated steel pedestal piece titled “#2”.

 

She then entered an iron poured animal head that mounted to the wall at an iron exhibition in 2013. Spencer also started to get into installation work. She had the ability to create an environment for the viewer to make he/she feel they are in another world fascinated her. So far her most successful installation piece was a hanging whale. She made this piece out of a metal body figure covered in cloth hung free with blue drapery followed by blue oceanic lighting and played prerecorded whale noises. In the dark it felt as if you were in the ocean and all of her viewers remarks were “ I just want to see it move!”. To create that tension between what the viewer feels is about to happen what should happen but doesn’t leaves the viewer with a feeling of excitement.

 

Her senior show in 2014 focused on materials such as wood, steel, cement and river stones. Through these presented works juxtapose the influence of human creation with objects directly from nature using balance, harmony and tension to accentuate the relationship and provoke a strong visceral response from the viewer. Spencer received a BA in Art with a concentration in Sculpture in 2013. She currently resides in Asheville, NC where she continues to make art currently concentrating on pottery in her home and a studio in the river arts district. Spencer is also currently attending UNCA to get her teaching license to be a K-12 studio art teacher. So she can show children how to change their perspective, learn how to problem solve and apply those skills to other parts of their life. There is a great quote by Grant wood “ The aim of art education in the public schools is not to make more professional artists but to teach people to live happier, fuller lives; to extract more out of their experience, whatever that experience may be.” Creating art helped Spencer as a child and even now as an adult create her own identity and develop great problem solving skills. She hopes to one day be able to help children even those with special needs find their inner artist in their eye and their hands.