Feature Story
270 Pyramids, 10 Hours: Professor Barbara Crawford Leads Landmark Red Rocks Amphitheatre Installation
After two years of preparation, Professor of Art Barbara Crawford completed her largest art installation yet at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado on April 7—the theatre’s first installation—with some of the local staff and a group of Southern Virginia University students, professors, and alumni.
“It’s definitely not just an artistic challenge, but an administrative and a logistic challenge,” said Crawford. “Coordinating with the theatre, the staff, those coming out to help, in addition to creating the pyramids and transporting them out to Colorado. I have designed and built houses, and this is in some ways similar to that type of process. But it’s very rewarding when it all comes together.”
While Crawford typically reused the pyramids used in past installations, due to the size of the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, which seats 9,500 visitors, she decided to make 270 new, larger pyramids—beating her record of 180 for her previous largest exhibition—each hand painted, cut, and folded over a five month period.
“I had already done an installation in a Greek and Roman location, so I needed one in the United States, and my research led me to Red Rocks in Colorado,” said Crawford. “I contacted different staff individuals, did a Zoom meeting with three of them, and then flew out there for an on-site meeting with two of the administrators, sent them reports and videos of previous work, the design concept for the new series, and was approved.”
“Because their program of performances was booked solid, I had one day to set up, take photos, and take down, and that was April 7,” Crawford continued.
To help on the day was a group of Southern Virginia University students, professors, alumni, and some of the theatre’s staff. The students and professors drove two days to Colorado, practicing assembling and disassembling the pyramids while in the vans in preparation for the 10-hour installation day at the amphitheater.
“We had to be very well organized, and everyone did exceptionally well,” said Crawford. “I had a four-page training manual, I arranged for 270 concrete 8×16 inch pavers to be deposited at the parking lot at the top of the theatre, then Melissa Wheeler, one of our SVU professors who came out to help, organized the ‘brick brigade’ to move them all down.”
“It was an intense day, setting them up,” continued Crawford. “Everybody had a copy of the design, so we would place a pyramid down and then check the spacing, because each one of these had to be placed on a precise location on the seats of the amphitheatre. My design was organized according to the numbers on the seats, so the placement was easy to determine.”
Since 2019, Crawford has showcased her pyramids in galleries and theaters around the world, including Paris, Malta, Italy, and France. Her most recent exhibitions were at the Ancient Roman Theater in Orange, France, and at the Crawick Multiverse in Sanquhar, Scotland.
As the longest-serving member of the Southern Virginia faculty, Crawford has taught art history, studio art, architectural drafting, and multimedia design at the university since 1979. She was the recipient of the 2016 Michael and Kay Elton Lectureship for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarship, a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2015, and was Cy Twombly’s assistant for the creation of The Ceiling in the Louvre Museum in Paris in 2009.