We were lucky to catch up with Margaret Craig recently and have shared our conversation below.

Margaret, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I guess my project called the Albatross would be one of the more meaningful projects it is certainly pivotal. My first degree in biology let me to have an interest in the environment as part of my work. The way I was taught however was not to be literal in your addressing your project so my work was always about observation of things unseen in nature and lending towards thinking about the human intervention whether intentional or unintentional. I have been doing exhibitions using recycled materials in combination with mixed media and my prints calling them alternative evolutions. The premises that that we have put this resource in the environment and and nature will eventually use it.
The idea for the Albatross piece came from the idea of getting artwork out of the gallery and to other people. There’s also the first time I took a blatant position on environmentalism and what we as humans are doing to planet. It became my first performance piece. I created a life-size plastic albatross with a belly full of plastic that hung around my neck like the mariner in Coleridge’s poem. Following behind me was a train of plastic with some of my alternative evolution pieces. That reference Marley’s ghost in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. I debuted at a light festival here in San Antonio called Luminaria. I have taken that performance a number of places. And two other performance pieces have followed, The Creature from the Bleach Lagoon, and most recently Twisted Twister which I will debut at the Smoky Hill River festival in June.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be an artist. However being an only child, my parents were not going to let me study art is they feared I would not be able to support myself.  The decision was made that I would study biology and get a secondary education license so I could teach it. I did a little substitute teaching but I never actually used this degree for what it was intended. What it did do was go on to inform my future artistic practice. 
A big part of biology is observation of the natural world and that is the same for art. So the biology was useful and after getting that first degree I went on on my own dime, to get a BS in Art, an MA with a focus and painting, and an MFA with a focus in printmaking. I wound up teaching art and being chair of my own department, Painting Drawing and Printmaking. I worked for the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio for 24 years. The school was swallowed whole by a local institution after COVID. Their offer of further employment was not good so now I’m an artist full-time and Professor Emeritus of Printmaking and Paper at a school at no longer exists. While maintaining my artistic practice was always part of my job, this full-time art thing is a new gig and I’m still figuring it out. 

I have work available on TurningArt and 1stDibs. I’m hoping to get work available on my website soon. Also for a little money I am happy to travel to do a performance of the Creature from the Bleached Lagoon or Twisted Twister. They work really well at festivals getting out environmental messages in a fun interactive way that’s great for adults and children.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I don’t know if there’s a particular goal or mission driving my creativity. Getting humans to think more about what they’re doing to the environment is of course very important to my work. I want to hopefully get people to see things in a different way, which I guess is a general artist goal. My personal makeup is one of a compulsive maker. I just always want to be physically creating, and more than just knitting. Part of my practice is experimentation. I think that’s what drew me to printmaking because there were so many ways of making a print and so many materials to experiment with. There is also many opportunities for happy accidents and then learning the process to recreate what happened in the mistake. The mistake became something to use further. I invented a technique to cast etchings in an acrylic medium. Because of this I had a stretchy etching and that instigated my use of recycled materials to form them dimensionally. And that made my environmental messages stronger.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

During COVID I inherited the paper making department at my school. At the time I had made paper a few times but never with the goal of teaching it to others. We didn’t have the funds to hire someone to teach it, And there were students who needed that studio to graduate. Part of my time off was spent really learning papermaking so I could reliably teach it to students. I did manage it and at the same time I approached paper making from a printmaking perspective and started screen printing with paper pulp. This new technique was a major addition to my artwork as now I could physically layer imagery, thinking about ecological development in the layers of leaves that go down every year. I not only help my students but wound up helping myself and adding a wonderful new element to my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://margaretcraig.com
• Instagram: #margaretacraig
• Facebook: Margaret Craig

Image Credits

my portrait, and The Albatross photo credit Sean Ward
all others courtesy of the artist