Jewelry artist and metalsmith Tanya Crane was featured in the Summer 2024 issue of On Wisconsin magazine.
Crane earned her MA and MFA from the School of Education’s Art Department, graduating in 2015, and now is a professor of the practice in metals at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She incorporates a technique called sgraffito, Italian for “to scratch,” in her artistic practice, where an outer layer of material is scratched away to reveal another layer beneath it.
Crane uses the technique on enamel, though it is traditionally applied to pottery. The technique lends her work “a meticulous level of detail and a mesmerizing clarity in design” that, along with her pedagogy, has earned her a 2024 United States Artists Fellowship.
The article notes sgraffito is a fitting technique “for an artist whose body of work chronicles memories and the passage of time,” as layers are scratched away and stories come into focus.
“I’m really interested in the stories (of the Great Migration) and particularly my family’s story,” Crane says. “I’m also interested in these old buildings that surround me (in Boston): the remnants of the textile industry and the detritus that they’ve left behind.”
To learn more about Crane and her work, check out the full article, “Sgraffito Storytelling.”