Summer Resident Spotlight: CRICE

If you’re in the Twin Cities, there’s a chance you’ve come across CRICE’s murals or digital work in the past few years. A public-sphere mixed media artist, CRICE is one of our two Spring 2024 Studio Residents, and has been embracing the discomfort of being a beginner since he came into CAFAC this Spring.

“I’m fully a fish out of water with this,” CRICE laughs, “But it's exciting because I really like when my artistry is challenged in a way.  It can lead to ‘happy accidents.’”

CRICE’s repertoire includes a mix of techniques, including printmaking, painting, graphic design, and digital illustration, but he hasn’t had in-depth experience with the fire arts. During his residency he’s started to explore enameling, and has started practicing welding again for the first time since undergrad.

“The more that I’ve been in the public art realm, the more interest I have in pieces that can stand the test of time,” he says. “It’s so different than the pristine-and-clean print world, or really tech-heavy projection mapping. You really have to focus or you’ll get burned–it’s a bit more zen in that way.”

CRICE’s proposal for the residency builds off of a body of work he’s been developing throughout his career as an artist. It’s a collection of imagery, motifs and icons that build off of personal, family, and cultural histories in a kind of symbolic language.

Once of CRICE’s symbolic creations, featuring two faces pointing in opposite directions with ornamental designs between them.

“Life in general influences me. I like to think that the symbols kind of find me in the moments that I’m wanting to create around specific themes,” CRICE says. “[They] kind of just reveal themselves.”

As he continues his residency, CRICE is keeping an open mind about the final form his project will take. But, he admits, the amount of possibilities there are at CAFAC have made it tough to think about narrowing down the scope of his work.

“Every time I come in here, my head’s spinning–it’s like ‘wow, I want to do that too!’” he laughs. “I’m just getting more and more excited, and ready to just do the work.”

CRICE practices cutting metal with an oxy-acetylene torch in the CAFAC shop.