Kouri + Corrao Announces Jack Craft’s First Solo Show in Santa Fe
SANTA FE, NM – May 8, 2023 – Contemporary art gallery Kouri + Corrao is excited to announce West Texas rancher and acclaimed metalsmith/printmaker Jack Craft’s solo show What Once Was The Sea Is Now A Desert, on view through June 17, 2023. Kouri + Corrao will host an artist reception May 19, 2023; 5-8pm with complimentary beverages and food from JesuSushi for purchase to celebrate the occasion. What Once Was The Sea Is Now A Desert opens at Kouri + Corrao’s Siler-Rufina location: 3213 Calle Marie, Santa Fe, NM 87507.
“As a child, I would find fossils of seashells on hillsides evidencing that the place where I was standing, 3000 feet above sea level, was once under water,” says Craft. “This new body of work is a synthesis of living through droughts and watching the plant life on my family ranch wither. I am imagining a rusted and monochrome world desiccated as a desert but with ancient geologic forms merged with recent skeletal reefs and marine forms – a landscape horrible, yet beautiful in its own way.”
What Once Was The Sea Is Now A Desert is comprised of 14 sculptures and five prints. Craft’s artwork consists of solid cast-iron sculptures and prints that utilize his sculptures as tools to create abstract images ultimately a reflection the mass and dimensions of the sculpture.
“Jack’s work has a hefty presence,” says Kouri + Corrao Managing Partner Justin Kouri. “A weight that coincides with the influence climate change has on our world. As a gallery, we believe it is our duty to support artists that bring attention to these issues.”
For Media Inquiries
Justin Kouri, Managing Partner
Kouri + Corrao
Gallery: +1 505 820 1888
Mobile: +1 917 254 6024
Email: justin@kouricorrao.com
About Jack Craft
Jack Craft is a fourth-generation commercial cattle rancher who lives on and operates his family property in the Clarendon, Texas. Along with the ranching, Craft maintains an active art practice. His artwork consists of cast-iron sculpture and prints. Craft’s practice is inextricably interwoven with the seasonal rhythms of the ranch.
Craft lives with his wife in the house where he was born and has had the same phone number and post office box his whole life. He is a lifelong student, and craftsman of both necessity and choice. Craft attended Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth where he received a degree in economics with minors in sculpture and ranch management. While attending TCU he spent a semester abroad in London. In his mid-thirties he ran away from home and spent six months traveling and working illegally in Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand. At the end of that time, he spent six weeks in New York and learned he never wanted to live there.
Craft enjoys food and cooking, people sometimes, reading, blacksmithing, silversmithing and recently making culinary knives.