Today, Sheila Crider is best-known for her abstract art, which takes the form of textile pieces, wall hangings and collages. But the self-taught artist’s background is actually in writing poetry.
She’d always had an appreciation for the arts, and was a model at the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design in Washington, D.C.
It was only when she started living in Bordeaux, France, that she started making the transition from the literary arts to the visual arts. But the intersection between art and language continued to fascinate her.
“When I was a model, I started doing research that eventually became my life study,” Crider recalls. “After a lot of research, I decided that poetry was the original abstract art, because all the poem’s meaning is contained within the body of the poem through the words and their usage. And so I decided that it’d be interesting to look at abstract art from that perspective, and that led me to look at art as language.”
Crider used that experience with language to change the language around art. She’s the originator of “Blackstraction,” a term she uses to encompass an art form that she’s observed in the world of abstract art.
She describes it as the usage of two-dimensional mediums to create three-dimensional art pieces, and has been working since she coined the term in 2000 to make it a part of the wider art lexicon.
Blackstraction does not solely refer to pieces by Black artists, but Crider titled the movement in honor of several prominent abstract artists of color, including Sam Gilliam and Jack Whitten.
“Someday, it’ll be in the dictionary,” Crider says. “That’s my goal.”
Crider was born and raised in Washington, D.C., where she spent most of her life before a recent move to Baltimore. Part of why she started creating art was as a means of communication.
While she was living in Bordeaux, she was not fluent in French. Her study of language and communication evolved to include more visual forms of communication, which led to her pursuit of the arts.
While she still writes today, she’s largely moved away from poetry and now writes about the intersection between language and art and how art is perceived.
She also spent time living in Japan, where she apprenticed under sumi-e (ink wash painting) master Kohei Takagaki and learned to make paper at the Mino Washi Paper Museum in Mino, a technique she still incorporates into her art today.
It was there that she discovered the works of Toko Shinoda, a lesser-known female sumi-e artist and calligrapher. Shinoda would serve as a future inspiration.
“It was interesting, because it was the first time I had ever traveled somewhere where I felt that being a woman was a handicap,” Crider says. “Whenever I went somewhere, they would arrange for someone to meet me instead of letting me go myself. It’s customary there, but it was interesting to experience as an American.”
Crider started out creating stationery, and spent many years selling hand-dyed books, papercrafts and wall hangings at the Eastern Market in D.C. Her frequent customers at the farmers market were the ones who encouraged her to apply for local art exhibitions.
While her pieces may be abstract, they are deeply meaningful. Crider is heavily influenced by her surroundings, in both the physical sense as well as the state of politics and culture.
During the first Trump administration, Crider debuted “WhiteWashing,” a series of paper-based pieces that were displayed at the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in 2018.
“[‘Whitewashing’] is now commonly used to mean obscuring the truth. … This thought came as I poured pulp on the fencing and realized how that act could be symbolic of what was going on in the country today, given the leadership and resurgence in violence towards minorities and how it has been covered up until now with little consequences, and like the rusty parts of the fence, still visible just below the surface,” Crider said at the time in an interview with East City Art.
She’s returned to this theme more recently. One of her latest pieces, “Ghost of Democracy,” utilizes the colors of the U.S. flag and the natural weathering of fabric to make a statement about the current state of the country.
Crider adds that with abstract art, a lot about the work is communicated through its title. It makes people think about art in a different way, especially in Crider’s case, as the materials she works with — paper, canvas and quilt batting — are often central to the messages of her works.
“When I sold pieces at Eastern Market, people would come up to me and ask, ‘What is this? What is this meant to be?’” Crider says. “I got in the habit of telling people what the materials were, and it was very effective because it made them look at the work in a very different way. I think that part of our job as artists is to educate people about what they’re looking at.”