Arlene “Arty” Turner Crawford on Art, Environment, and Community Building
Arty, along with fellow artists Raymond Thomas and Dorian Sylvain, brought the idea of the Sankofa bird to the gathering spaces project. The gathering space includes a wooden sculpture covered with mosaic, QR codes and painted images of historical Bronzeville figures, repurposed and painted concrete pieces, and seating made from the trunks of dead ash trees.
Her process drew inspiration from the Wall of Respect, a 1967 mural in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood that became a center for people in the community. She says, the community started having music, and poetry events, people getting up on their platforms, and talking politics… it became a hub for that community and brought pride back to the area.
The Sankofa team wanted to approach their gathering space similarly.
“To me [I wanted to] make it a new kind of thing… the fact that it was set up to be a gathering space to be something that people could utilize, just like they utilize the park, but in a different way along and around a piece of art was cool.”
Not only does the Sankofa bird symbolize “looking back for that which you have forgotten”, but the location juxtaposed to the Illinois Central Railroad reflects the routes many African Americans took coming from the south during and after the Civil War.
“Something about the gathering spaces I found unique was that it became a place that that community used. Because Black people like being in nature, coming from the South, it's something that gives them a sense of security… learning the background history, and bringing it back to life in a way where it was focused on letting more community be a part of it.”
Arty is currently curating a showcase with a group of African American Women Artists called Sapphire and Crystals which will be on exhibition at the Logan Center in October 2023. She is also involved in a Year of Healing project called Train of Thought which will be displayed outside of the Forum in Bronzeville starting in August 2023.
She also co-authored a recently published paper, “Sankofa Urbanism: Retrieval, Resilience, and Cultural Heritage in Cities through Time” which draws inspiration from the Sankofa for the Earth Gathering Space to argue that “urban sustainability will be improved when it supports and elevates heritage-informed nature-based solutions that animate public life in city neighborhoods.” The paper is now available to download for free, here.
You can keep up with all of Arty’s projects on her website.
