CRANE BUILDING ART RESIDENCY
CELBRATING THE COMMUNITY IN THE CRANE BUILDING
This is such an amazing project to be part of. The Crane Building is a large office building at the heart of Southwark a stones throw from The Tate Modern with a driverse range of companies that work within it. The manager of the company that owns the building asked me to create a project that engaged and collaborated with people in the building not only to celebrate their individual artistic skills but also to make the community more aware of who else was in the building. The large reception area was a great place to showcase these murals with its large expanse of empty walls and so the Crane Building Art Residency was born.
As the project progressed the pandemic started to upgrade its presence so inevitably the project has been put on pause until the community returns. In the meantime I will hopefully be doing the Pandemic Portraits of people in the building to keep people plugged into the Creative Lane. If you work in the Crane Building and would like a free Pandemic Portrait done please get in touch by emailing your selfie to marccraigartist@icloud.com
JANUARY 2020
PATRICIA’S HUMMINGBIRDS
Patricia was a joy to work with on the first mural. With her amazing ability to go around the building doing her cleaning and spreading joy to everyone she meets I really wanted to capture this in the mural. When mentioned her family was from Jamaica what better way to represent her than the native hummingbird.
FEBURARY 2020
FILTR LOGO
Eva and Hugo who run the Cheil cafe on the ground floor always serve with a smile and as such they are an integral element to the well-being of daily office experience. Eva is also a great artist who loves to draw feathers whilst Hugo loves HTML language. We used the HTML symbols to create unique doodle creatures.
MARCH 2020
SPECIAL ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE YOU SMILE
The reception ladies seemed the perfect collaboration for the next mural. Naomi and Nathalia, from Brazil and Dominica respectfully, chose the Golden Lion Tamarin and the Sisserou Parrot to represent their countries and embraced a carnival theme as it is something celebrated in both their countries.
APRIL 2020
RETRO SPEAK
Alex who works for Cheil showed me his modest collection of retro objects including his dial phone which became the starting point for the mural. We added the map of the location of The Crane Building and realised that the centre of the dial was the exact location of The Crane Building. He also added positive quotes.
MAY 2020
JUKES LANDSCAPE
Matt who works for Cheil is an accomplished artist in his own right and I really wanted to see how I could combine my doodles with his signature meditative landscapes. This was the result and it was great to add another perspective to his marvellous art pieces. A great example of how collaboration mutually inspires.
JUNE 2020
CONDUCT AND COLLABORATE
Lee from Cheil manages the various exciting projects Cheil deals with directly and we realised that his role was like a creative conductor. We loved the idea of him bringing together and orchestrating the creative elements of the project as if they were part of a model kit. We found symbols to represent creativity.
JULY 2020
CRANE CAVE PAINTING
Ahmed works at reception and he was a real source of inspiration, telling me about Somalia. We found out that Somalia has some of the oldest cave paintings in the world called Laas Geel and the paintings looked like my doodles! As a bonus Ahmed‘s mother let us use one of her poems to decorate the spaces in the mural.
AUGUST 2020
THE WISDOM TREE
I love this mural as Lavina from Top Desk was so positive when I first spoke with her. She loves her job as she gives that little bit extra in helping others. She also loves the environment, especially bees. Using affirming questions we created The Wisdom Tree inviting people to reboot there thinking in a positive way.