Craig A. Kraft

In 2017 he traveled to the Kalahari Desert of Namibia, where he met the Sans, the oldest indigenous group in the world. Months after returning from Africa, Kraft realized that the safari directly exposed him to the sacred animals which the Sans had worshipped. The most powerful to him was the elephant.  He then proceeded to sculpt, in light, the spirit of the African elephant-half size- in a light blue-silvery neon. During this creative process, the spirit of the African elephant evolved into the Damaged spirit of the African elephant, visually illustrating the horrific poaching of elephants tusks occurring around the world.

Krafts career then dove into an 8-year inquiry into the universal urge to connect through mark making.  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.

When asked why he began to work in large-scale public art by Washington, DC local news reporter Holly Morris, Kraft responded that he wanted to be able to draw on buildings with neon, and that when drawing in space with light one needs to be able to work much larger. Many of his public art pieces appear to do just this. 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. Lightweb was commissioned by the local Montgomery County Government in 2003. Vivace, another one of Kraft's renowned public works which was commissioned by the city of Washington DC for the Watha T Daniel Library. This Sculpture is 21' x 14' x 7' and made of rolled painted aluminum, neon, and steel.

Kraft's sculptures have been featured in over 120 exhibits throughout the United States, including fifteen solo exhibitions, fifteen public art installations, and in various international art exhibitions. 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 since 1992. His work has been published in over 25 books, magazine articles, and newspaper articles. His work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of Neon Art (MONA).

After spending a nearly a decade learning to use neon in the service of art, Kraft began to spend some of his time teaching others the craft of neon. 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. Since 1992 Kraft has been a member of the faculty of the Smithsonian Institution Studio Arts Program and has offered private neon workshops at his studio.

In the beginning of his career, Kraft worked with modeling the figure in clay, using traditional methods and traditional subjects. 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. The philosophy of the school was to treat neon as a sculptural medium rather than merely a medium for commercial signage. Kraft was able to manipulate the neon in order to integrate it with his fragmented, sequenced figurative work. The colored lights added a certain volume, experience, and mood to the work that Kraft found previously lacking.

Craig A. Kraft (born Craig Allan Kraft; born on December 7, 1949) is an American sculptor. Over the course of his career, Kraft has gained national recognition for his neon light works, establishing him as one of the leading neon sculptors of today. In his earlier works, such as Seated/Unseated Woman and Light Figure Fragment, Kraft rendered sculptures incorporating details in neon. Since 2000, the main focus of Kraft's art has been privately commissioned pieces, such as Connective Ascension, and monumental public art works, such as Lightweb in Downtown Silver Spring, MD, that are abstract pieces made from rolled aluminum and neon tubing.

Craig Kraft was born on December 7, 1949 in Ames, IA. During college and graduate school, Kraft's interests laid primarily in the sciences. As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Kraft received his B.S. in zoology in 1971, followed by an M.A. in Environmental Education and Science in 1974. It was not until two years after he finished his master's degree that Kraft began developing his skills as a visual artist. In 1976 Kraft moved to New Orleans, LA, and started to model, cast, and paint the figure in clay. Neon was not included as a medium in his works until 1983 when Kraft began attending classes at the newly opened American School of Neon in Minneapolis, MN, which taught working with neon not as a commercial tool but as a means of artistic expression. 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.