From Patti Smith to Katy Dove, Platform’s Jenny Crowe tells us who inspires her.
Patti Smith
Horses was my introduction to Patti Smith via a mix tape that a great friend made for me. I played it on repeat while studying at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee.
Around that time, I was lucky enough to undertake an exchange to the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. On our first day there, still jetlagged and adjusting to everything stateside, we stumbled across a free arts festival and were ushered along with huge crowds into a seemingly vast auditorium for a spoken word event. As we found our seats, that unmistakable voice and those iconic opening lines of Horses made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I was smitten with Patti from then on. I’ve seen her in venues small and large since and she always reminds me of the power of performers to change our world.
Katy Dove
I have worked with a great number of artists since. It’s always an enriching experience and it never fails to amaze me how truly great artists act as a catalyst for change and help us to consider alternative perspectives. I was lucky enough to work with Katy Dove a few times and from being a peer she became a friend. Katy had an enduring strength and grace, which shone through her incredible body of work. She continues to be a brilliant example of living your life with a beautifully elegant yet down to earth approach.
Raymond Carver
Despite his fairly downbeat oeuvre, Raymond Carver’s writing has always been a real source of comfort to me. His writing has an indelible truth and honesty. At our toughest hour we often reveal and learn the most about ourselves and Carver’s writing is a mirror for the best and worst of humanity. Somehow he manages to capture the beauty of childhood friendship or the personal grief of impending mortality. Carver’s anthologies are my new testament and a constant presence at my bedside.
Kevin Hutcheson
My gurus are the things and people that I interact with the most – a long friendship that evolves over the years or a piece of work that continues to resonate. Kevin Hutcheson was an artist and friend who died quite unexpectedly at the beginning of 2016. When we studied together, I probably saw Kevin every day, more often than not conversing as he continued to work, cutting images and text for a collage. Apart from introducing me to both Smith and Carver he was part of that group of true friends at college that helped me to define my creative approach which still holds true today.
Jenny Crowe is Arts Manager of Platform.
www.platform-online.co.uk
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