Artist David Crawford with his bronze sculpture, 'The Fiddler Clown.'

Oregon artist David Crawford was born in Walla Walla, Wash., in 1955, but grew up in the small Eastern Oregon towns of Lakeview and Adale, a landscape rich in ranching heritage. His parents were teachers in a two-room schoolhouse. Crawford began working his summers away from home at an early age, on a ranch during the summer from sixth grade on. Art was not a big focus in that environment, he remembers. “I can recall when I was 18, I worked all summer without a day off unless it rained, on the MC Ranch (at one time the largest ranch in the United States). I bunked at the ranch each summer from when I was 12 until I got out of school. I worked in the hayfields, starting out as a baleliner, then became a bale wagon driver. Some of the hayfields had 900 acres of bales to line up for the bale wagons.”

Crawford received his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Eastern Oregon State College in 1979. Crawford, his wife, Victoria, and their two sons live in Eastern Oregon, where David maintains a full-time studio.

“I spent my childhood as a dedicated renegade and still hold somewhat of a title for my outlaw behavior in the community I grew up in. If that community had been Portland instead of Adale, I might be writing a parole request instead of an artist’s biography. In a town the size of Adale, however, one does not enjoy the anonymity required to nurture misconduct to a felonious crescendo.

“Becoming an artist seemed to me the ultimate act of defiance, the perfect misdemeanor. Everyone knows what you are doing and that it isn’t what you are supposed to be doing, but no one can do anything about it.

“Although my early employment revolved around cows and things for cows to eat, my early art interests didn’t and my current art interests don’t. I do think, however, that growing up living and working in a cattle-ranching community does afford certain perspectives on the relationship between man and his environment – the effects of time on man’s accomplishments and the effects of man on the process of time. I feel urban life revolves so specifically around people that it tends to distance us from other living things and the lessons to be learned from them.

“If I have any specific mission or goal in my career as an artist, it is to help reunite current society with the concept of community, not as history but as an ongoing process. My works often involve ancient imagery and contemporary applications. I like to suggest that man’s destiny is amendable and that we are obligated to refine our focus.”

Crawford works predominately in bronze – machined, cast, hammered or tooled. The scale of his work varies, from pieces that can be held in the hand to those that are larger than life-size. His work first received national recognition in 1984 when it was featured in American Crafts Magazine and appeared in a San Francisco public television broadcast. He has exhibited in numerous shows throughout the United States.

Valley Bronze Gallery will unveil two new bronze sculptures by David Crawford Saturday, June 10, with a reception for the artist at 5 p.m. The public is invited to meet Crawford and hear the tales that inspired these new works of art.