Chrissie Orr. artist, anthropologist, activist, animateur.

Born in Scotland, Chrissie Orr attended Edinburgh College of Art and then proceeded to develop her skills as an artist in unconventional places and ways. She was a circus performer throughout Europe, a muralist in Corsica and has created community based projects in Australia, Iran, Turkey, Europe, Mexico and America. She was co-director of Arran Community Arts Project, Isle of Arran, Scotland, which was one of the first rural arts projects to be funded by the Scottish Arts Council. She was Community Artist for East Lothian, where she developed innovative projects involving gathering stories from diverse communities. As founder of the nationally acclaimed Teen Project in Santa Fe, New Mexico, her vision and skills were recognized by both the US Congress and the NEA, and she has been nominated for numerous awards for her work with youth. She has lectured internationally on her work and process, especially regarding the Bridge Project that addressed issues on the border between El Paso, US, and Juarez, Mexico. She recently was guest artist at the University of Michigan, and has just completed a nine month residency in south Georgia, as part of the Artists and Communities for the Millennium Project.

"I aspire to produce art that is not self-referential but relates and responds powerfully to entities outside itself. My work is about developing an aesthetic around community and site with issues relevant to both. The work often is a catalyst for social change. It engages those who have rarely or never thought of themselves as being creative, to recognize and express knowledge and ideas. My work as an artist/anthropologist is to conduct a sensitive process to produce a powerful visual image in spaces readily accessible to a broad public. The art becomes part of society rather than for it." Chrissie Orr.

"Orr is a 90 pound dynamo laced with integrity. She's a dreamer who isn't afraid to get her hands dirty."
Diane Armitage. Art critic and Professor of Art History.

"She is an artist in the truest and most passionate sense with a deep and very real understanding of how her work interacts with the world it stems from." Zane Fisher. Director of Plan B, Contemporary Arts Center

"The public dimensions of Orr's way of working transcend the purely individualistic concept of how art is made and suggest new and broader concepts of Public Art that are very beautiful and provide hope for the future. Carl Hertel. Art critic and Professor of Environmental Art.

"Republicans and philistines who argue that art is a luxury, an indulgence with no utilitarian value to society, should check out Chrissie Orr. Since arriving in America a decade ago- and, before that, in her native Scotland-she has been an enabler, working with people not so much on the margins of society as off the page completely." Barry Graham. Writer.