Linda Craighead

Linda Craighead Description

Linda Craighead explores history through an archive of photographsand memorabilia that came to her from her parents and grandparents.

 “As a sixth generation Californian,” she says, “the work operates as a device to explore personal histories and examine my place in my family’s narrative.” Using both paper and fiber, Craighead combines traditional and contemporary techniques to evoke generations of families. Techniques such as photopolymer etching and relief, drypoint etching, mezzotint, collage, Chine collé, embroidery, drawing and embossment are all working together to form a multi-layered image.

Her works have been shown most recently as part of the travelingexhibition, Printed and Stitched: A Collaboration: California Society of Printmakers and Studio Art Quilt Associates, Linda Craighead: Grandmothers, Printmakers at the Tannery, Santa Cruz, California and About Face at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, California. 

Craighead is no stranger in the Bay Area artworld. Her background is in printmaking and textiles as well as in Arts Leadership. Her education began at the University of California in Santa Barbara where she majored in art history and printmaking. She then pursued a B.A. in printmaking, Special Secondary in Art Education at OregonState and an M.F.A in Design (Textiles) at San Jose State University. She was an instructor in textile arts at the University of California in Santa Cruz from 1975 to 1977.

It is not possible to list all of Craighead’s accomplishments in arts leadership, but among them is as co-director of the Textile Art Centre in Athens, Greece and Project Director for a county wide, art-in-education program for artistically gifted children as part of the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. In New York previously, she was Project coordinator for “The Decade Show” for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem. She was a Special Projects Coordinator for the American Craft Museum and the Director of the Palo Alto Arts Center from 1992 – 2009 where her leadership provided direction for

exhibitions for such artists as Kay Sekimachi and Bob Stocksdale, Christopher Brown, Robert Brady and Dominic DiMare among others.