Crystal Marie on Intuitive Collage, Salvaged Materials, and Finding a Creative Voice
Host Wendy Solganik interviews mixed media and collage artist Crystal Marie (formerly Crystal Neubauer), author of The Art of Expressive Collage and a 2018 Racine Art Museum Artist Fellowship recipient, about her life, art, and teaching. Crystal describes moving into a Chicago Little Village live/work storefront to stay near the art scene on an artist’s budget and traces her maker roots to a craft-filled childhood. She recounts attending a university-affiliated high school, becoming a teen parent, working up through printing-industry project management, and later burning out while raising seven kids in a blended family. Her professional art career began in the early 2000s through eBay paper packs, Somerset Studio, blog/Flickr communities, early publications and the book A Charming Exchange, then teaching at Art & Soul. Crystal explains evolving from whimsical collage to more restrained work, discovering encaustic to preserve ephemera, coping with mold-related illness that forced her to discard her paper collection, shifting to online teaching during the pandemic, and planning Fodder School projects including a handmade hair calligraphy brush challenge and texture-based collage lessons.
00:00 Meet Crystal Marie
02:26 Podcast Premise and Subscribe
03:49 Crystal’s Chicago Studio Life
08:26 Finding the Perfect Live Work Space
13:10 Early Making Roots
15:35 Scholarship to University High
22:04 Teen Parenthood and Survival
30:06 Creativity Through Beads and Sewing
31:50 Printing Career and Moving to Chicago
36:51 Brady Bunch Burnout
39:36 eBay Paper Hustle to Collage
41:57 Somerset Studio Spark
46:59 Blog Era and First Teaching Gig
49:54 Discovering Encaustic Wax
53:59 Basement Studio Beginnings
55:29 Shifting to Abstract Collage
59:24 Selling Art Online Early
01:01:12 Finding the Old Work
01:04:00 Book and Name Change
01:06:15 Intuition and Altering Papers
01:10:45 Mold Loss and Rebuilding
01:16:25 Pandemic Online Teaching Boom
01:19:51 Where to Buy and Follow
01:28:11 Illness and Career Upside Down
01:38:30 Fodder Challenge Hair Brush
01:43:05 Texture Fodder Classes Wrap