Waring-Crane reshapes narratives in art exhibit at Zapara School of Business

The exhibit is on display Jan. 17 – Feb. 2 in the rotunda of the Zapara School of Business with an artist’s reception and talk scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 19 at 6 p.m. Tim Musso, associate art professor and director of Brandstater Gallery serves as exhibit curator.

Waring-Crane, who has exhibited her art work in La Sierra’s events in years past, holds a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s in English and communication. Through the years she gradually came to trust her own heart, her biographical statement says, and she earned a Master of Fine Arts in 2020 from California State University, San Bernardino.

“I strive to be a tender witness to the child I once was." -- Rebecca Waring-Crane, artist, "Speaking For My Self"

Her past exhibitions include The Body Catalog in 2018 at Cal State San Bernardino, and the group exhibition “Everything All At Once” at the Chaffey Community Museum of Art in Ontario in 2019. Her artist’s thesis project, “Stories I’m Telling Myself,” was shown online in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.

Her multifaceted background includes stints in Lebanon, Kenya, and the American Midwest. She has taught grade school in Nairobi, Kenya, and more recently has taught writing and public speaking to students in Riverside. Now, she “wholeheartedly embraces the title of artist,” she states, while cultivating a multidisciplinary practice and the art of story “animated by objects, words, questions that have many answers or none at all.”

Through story, she “reclaims and reshapes the narratives of family, identity and memory as a way to understand and find the humanity in them,” she says.

Waring-Crane’s artist’s statement about the current show notes that the purpose of the work displayed is to “reframe memories and reclaim power for a time when I was powerless.

“I strive to be a tender witness to the child I once was,” she writes. “When I sit patiently with her in her loneliness and tears, anger and dissociation she tells me stories. She knows so much. Her stories are rich and fertile, layered material I use for making the three-dimensional works in this gathering.”

"Speaking For My Self" is available for viewing Mon. - Thurs., 9 a.m. - 6 p.m., and Fri., 9 a.m. - 12 noon. For further information contact tmusso@lasierra.edu.