Sterling Crawford Exhibit Celebrates Greenville Man’s Walk on the Moon - TOWN Magazine
Stall Three Studio Founder and contributing artist, Sterling Crawford, was featured in an article in TOWN Magazine. Read the article below, or follow this link to read the article on towncarolina.com.
The following is copied from the article published in the printed copy of TOWN Magazine and on the magazine’s website. Written by John Jeter on May 3, 2024.
Photo by Jack Robert Photography
Artists explore inner space to share the mysteries of a world accessible to us all. Astronauts explore outer space to share mysteries that are accessible only to them. Linking those two callings may sound like a bit of a stretch, but that’s a connection a young artist is making with a project that celebrates her grandfather’s walk on the moon.
The artist is Sterling Crawford. The astronaut is Charlie Duke. In 1972, he was part of the three-man Apollo 16 mission that landed on the lunar surface, where he and John Young spent as many as 20 hours over three days outside the module. In April, she opened an online-only exhibition, Space Exploration: Past, Present and Future to honor the man she calls GrandDuke.
“I have this grandfather who has accomplished such great things—that only 12 people in the world have done—and I have come to a point in my life where I’m old enough to fully acknowledge that and respect that,” she says. “Growing up with a grandfather who has walked on the moon, it’s just, ‘Oh, what’s your fun fact in class?’ ‘Oh, my grandfather’s walked on the moon.’ But now it’s, like, wow, I see all of the hard work it took, all the risk. It took everything. And that amazes me.”
For his part, the soft-spoken retired Air Force brigadier general was the 10th and youngest man to walk on the moon. Today, he says he’s excited to see his granddaughter’s entrepreneurial spirit come alive in the project that will include two of her paintings.
“I’m really proud of her,” he says, adding: “She’s got some great ideas; she’s basically an entrepreneur.”
GrandDuke
Crawford, 26, earned a bachelor of science degree in finance from the College of Charleston in 2019. After three years working in accounting, she went on to paint landscapes and portraits of dogs, earning commissions along the way. Today, she runs Stall Three Studio, housed in a horse barn on the Laurens farm where she and her husband, Brawley, live. She has also started STALL magazine, whose long-form journalism covers wide-ranging topics.
“I’ve never really thought about GrandDuke’s life significantly inspiring my entrepreneurial spirit, but I think it really does,” she says. “It’s in our blood: taking risks, accepting challenges, facing challenges.”
During a rainy morning in early spring, GrandDuke and his grandkid trade mutual admiration in the living room of the Chanticleer home Duke shares with Dotty, his wife of 60 years. She has just come downstairs to check on the two. They moved from Texas to Greenville last year.
“I’m just excited, very excited,” Dotty says. “A whole new idea—and just the perseverance that she has. I knew she had beautiful art, a beautiful gift, but all this business stuff, too, is really part of it.” She pauses, then adds: “And both persevere.”
Photos: Stall Three Studio Space Exploration launch
As Duke says of Sterling, “She’s not only a great artist, but developing into a business lady, too, so I just wish her all success, and we pray for her and that her career will blossom through this and other work she’s done.”
Finally, Crawford refers to Odysseus, which in February was the first US-built spacecraft in 50 years to land on the lunar surface.
“The space industry has become a lot more accessible to a lot more people, which is bringing more buzz around it, and everyone wants to be involved,” she says. “So I feel like now is a great time to do a collection, an exhibition on space.”
Digital Space Exhibit
For her digital exhibition, Sterling Crawford joins three other artists in showing 16 works—another nod to the Apollo mission that astronaut Charlie Duke flew in 1972. Limited edition prints ranging from $350 to more than $1,200 will be available, some with Duke’s autograph. A portion of the proceeds from sales benefits the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
Here are the other artists whose work appears alongside Crawford’s two paintings in Space Exploration: Past, Present and Future.
Andy Saunders is known worldwide for restoring original NASA photographs from Apollo 16, many of them images Duke captured with the space agency’s Hasselblad 70mm camera. The Briton’s work has been exhibited internationally and has appeared on the BBC, CBS News, the Daily Telegraph, The New York Times, Smithsonian magazine and many more. The Space Exploration exhibit also includes a Saunders restoration of Charlie Duke standing outside the landing craft and saluting a crewmate.
John Angerson, a British photographer, spent a year documenting the 1996 Endeavor space shuttle mission, which was designated STS-72. NASA granted him unprecedented access to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.“Revisiting the original negatives in 2022, Angerson brings them together with hundreds of images uncovered at the US National Archives that were made in Earth’s orbit and captured by the original STS-72 crew. Some of the most important items that the astronauts have brought back from space have been their photographs, which over the years, have permanently changed the way we think, feel and see our place in the universe.”
Nikolina Kovalenko, a Moscow native who runs her eponymous studio in Brooklyn, New York, has exhibited her oil paintings in marquee galleries all over the world.“My work explores how humans incorporate Nature into mythologies and cultural beliefs,” she writes in an essay. “From time immemorial, the moon has been a major symbol for humanity, representing everything from early deities to scientific advancement, from the earliest origins of our solar system to the promise of a future outside Earth.
The exhibition runs through June 30.