Amanda Crowe artist

was born on July 16, 1928, at the Qualla Boundary, North Carolina.

By Age four, she’d Chose to become an artist. Of her youth, Amanda said: “Every spare minute was spent in carving or studying anything available concerning art” At age eight, she was selling her carvings.

Both Crowe’s parents died when she was very young. By the time she reached high school, her foster mother arranged for her to live in Chicago, where she graduated from Hyde Park High School and attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She earned the John Quincy Adams fellowship for overseas study in 1952, and that she chose to research sculpture together with Jose De Creeft at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Crowe also got her Master of Fine Arts degree by SAIC that year.

Back in 1953, the Cherokee Historical Association encouraged Amanda Crowe artist straight back into North Carolina to teach studio art at Cherokee High School, where her uncle Goingback Chiltoskey was teaching. She founded a studio at the Paint Town community and educated wood carving for nearly four decades to over 2000 students.

Her sculptures were frequently animal characters, also she had been specially famous for the expressive bears.

Her job is equally compact, highly stylized, and easily painted. She worked with clay and stone, but timber has been her favorite moderate, also she carved with local forests like wild cherry, buckeye, and walnut.

Her art is occasionally in contrast to this work of Willard Stone. Art scholar Esther Bockhoff writes that Crowe had been ” undoubtedly one of the primary influences on the resurgence of Cherokee carving”

Public sets which have her job comprise the Cleveland States Department of the Inner , and also the National She has shown her work such Museums since the Art Institute Chicago.

A Registered member of the Eastern Band, Amanda Crowe was born in Murphy, North Carolina to an Anglo Mother and Cherokee dad.

She had been four and a half years of age when began to draw and to carve. ” I was barely big enough to handle a knife ” she stated, ” but I knew what I wanted to do—I guess it was part of my heritage ” Carving was something which Crowe grewup with; Richard Crowe, Bill, her brothers were both carvers. In grade school, she studied with her uncle Goingback Chiltoskey,. Former manager of Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, remembered her as a schoolgirl with a knife in her hand. “She carried a knife to school, and I was so scared of her. Later on, I figured out she was carving even then.” By now Crowe had been eight years of age, and she sold small carvings of her very own.

Crowe was delivered to attend Hyde-park Senior School. ” During my sculpture studies at the Chicago Art Institute, I worked in clay, built up figures in plaster, cut a few pieces in stone, wrought metal sculpture, and carved wood ”

Through her career that was and her studies, wood stayed her material. ” My favorite sculpture material is still wood, for working with it creates in me a wonderful feeling of joy which is not present when I work in any other medium”. To me, wood is the most pleasurable to the touch and the most responsive to tools,” she said. “The grain challenges me to create objects in three dimensions.” Crowe often looked for wood that had some unique aspect to it. “A mistake or flaw in the wood will improve your design,” she explained. “To me, a knot can be the best part.” Crowe finished her undergraduate degree and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts. Awarded a fellowship for foreign study in 1952, she traveled to the Instituto Allende in San Miguel, Mexico to study with Jose´ de Creeft, a sculptor best known for his bronze figure of Alice in Wonderland in New 

Back in 1953, Crowe arrived to Cherokee and establish a studio at the Painttown community. She found teaching profitable. ” There is stimulation in helping others know the joy of creating their own things and in seeing them grow in their enthusiasm,” she commented. She taught procedure and aesthetics, but brought the entrepreneurial elements of dividing as nicely and students . Crowe entered her students’ work in competitions and exhibitions, often taking home multiple prizes of recognition. In her forty years in the classroom, Crowe trained many of today’s carvers including Virgil Ledford, Lloyd Carl Owle, and the late John Wilnoty, Jr. Former student, Bud Smith said of her teaching, “Everyone that carves here learned from her.” Her dedication was legendary; she often spent time after classes and on weekends helping students find wood for their work. Her teaching extended into the community. With her partner Doris Coulter, Crowe produced carving kits complete with instructions and a block of wood cut to size. These were sold by mail order from the 1960s well into the 1980s.

By the time Amanda Crowe artist was thirty years old, she had amassed a number of prestigious honors usually reserved for more mature artists.

Her work was shown at the High Museum in Atlanta (1955) and the Mint Museum in Charlotte (1957). She participated in the Inter-Tribal Ceremonial Exhibit (1956 and 1957) as well as international expositions in New Dehli (1959) and Cairo (1961). In 1966, Crowe penned an article that was published in a national Girl Scout magazine. Titled “Whittle Awhile,” she gave step-by-step instruction to a wide audience. “With little more than a pocketknife, a block of wood, and a few basic instructions,” she wrote, “you can be on your way.” Explaining her process, she admonished her readers to be careful. “Both hands should be behind the cutting blades at all times,” she wrote. In this article aimed at young girls, she added, “If your brother has a good, sharp pockeknife, he may be willing to lend it to you. But you’ll proably want to invest in your own.”

Crowe started the style of a Bit with a paper sketch which exemplified a variety of compositions and moves. Undoubtedly, she had been famous for the carvings of bears. “Everybody in the country must have one of my bears,” she said. Crowe’s bears were more appealing simply since these certainly were anthropomorphic and patient. She depicted them standing, walking, running, reaching, and sometimes balanced one upon another. She often made complicated compositions with multiple bears and bear families. Her style was somewhat abstract and lyrical; her sculpture relied on an indication of movement, rather than carved detail. She made animals both native and foreign: bulls, horses, and rabbits were included in her repertoire, as well as loons and giraffes. Western North Carolina had been known for carved animal figures since the 1930s when a carving program was begun at the John C. Campbell Folk School.  Aware of the program at Brasstown, Crowe added to the popularity of the regional genre.  “I used to think that Brasstown was really it,” she remarked.

Crowe was an avid outdoors woman who enjoyed fishing and hunting.

She restored antique automobiles and once dismantled a log cabin and moved it to her property. Traveled widely as a student, teacher, and artist. She showed her work at fairs in Arizona and California and closer to home at the Craftsman’s Fair of the Southern Highlands in Gatlinburg and Asheville. 1963, she was tapped by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board to teach carving in Mississippi for the Choctaw. 1980, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In 1987, she was made a Life Member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. 2000, she was the recipient of a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award. 2007, a collection of Crowe’s work, including tools and a series of “how to” guides, were donated posthumously to the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual permanent collection

Works Cited

“Amanda Crowe’s Carvings on Exhibition in Cherokee,” Asheville Citizen-Times (27 September 1970).
Bockhoff, Esther. “Cherokee Carvers: The New Tradition,” The Explorer 19.3 (1977): 4-11.
Crowe, Amanda. Curriculum Vitae, Southern Highland Craft Guild (24 April 1961).
Crowe, Amanda. “Whittle Awhile,” American Girl 49.7 (1966): 12-14.
Derks, Scott. “Artistry in Wood,” Wildlife in North Carolina (1981): 6-11.
DuPuy, Edward. Artisans of the Appalachians (Asheville: Miller Printing, 1967).
DuPuy, Edward. “Interview with Amanda Crowe,” Southern Highland Craft Guild (1965).
Gaynes, David. Artisans / Appalachia / USA (Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1977).
Indian Arts and Crafts Board. Sculpture and Carving by Amanda Crowe (Cherokee, NC: 1970).
Neal, Dale. “Carving was a lifelong love for Cherokee native,” Asheville Citizen-Times (29 September 2004).
Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual. Cherokee Artists 2: The Woodcarvers, Film (Cherokee, NC: 1994).
“Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual in Cherokee Receives Gift of Famed Carver’s Collection,” Fun Things to Do in the Mountains (September 2007): 38.
“Woman of the Week,” Asheville Citizen-Times (9 December 1957).