Craig A. Kraft

In his earlier works, such as Seated/Unseated Woman and Light Figure Fragment, Kraft rendered sculptures incorporating details in neon.

He has twice been featured as an artist at the International Sculpture Conference and has been a member of the faculty of the Smithsonian Institution Studio Arts Program[1] since 1992.

In 1989 he studied at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL, with Stephen Antonakos, whom Kraft still considers one of his major influences.

[4] In his own words, Kraft is “inspired by the site in public art and by close examination of form, color, and light in general.

While many artists resist sharing their specific (and often secret) techniques to others, Kraft has always enjoyed teaching eager students the skills and perspectives that he has gained over the years.

But, by the early 1980s he began to find his work becoming monotonous, and looked towards the newly opened American School of Neon in Minneapolis, MN for inspiration.

[9]  It started in 2009 with a series called Unintentional Drawings and progressed to the omnipresent graffiti on the walls of the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale Mississippi.

This urge to mark inspired him to travel to 3 continents and visit 27 ancient cave sites in Southern Europe, Indonesia[10] and Africa to view, first hand, the first drawings, paintings, and etchings made by early homo sapiens from up to 40,000 BC.

The experiences that he had within the caves has led his artistic career to investigate modern and ancient symbols as well as paint and draw images combined with the same type of flickering light- dots and hand stencils.

Months after returning from Africa, Kraft realized that the safari directly exposed him to the sacred animals which the Sans had worshipped.

Lightweb, arguably Kraft's most famous work, installed on an external elevator in downtown Silver Spring, MD, features green, red, and blue colored tubes that extend from its architectural base into the air to create a 35' by 10' by 10' light drawing in the night sky.

However other art critics believe that Kraft's most recent neon works, which incorporate aluminum tubes painted in a vibrant powder coating, appear just as bold during the daytime as during the night.