FEATURED COLLECTIONS
Early Work
It was 1965 when Ingrid Jacobson arrived at Rhode Island School of Design's Nickerson Hall. Music took centerstage in her artistic coming-of-age movie. Ingrid would play her guitar and sing her roommate, Margery, to sleep with exquisite covers. “What impressed me about young Ingrid was her focus,” said Margery. “Her intensity, and passion for life." As a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Croce applied her generative, frenetic process to design study under Gerald Immonen, working in wine cork and India ink. Shortly thereafter, she transferred to Moore College of Art, taking up painting with her mentor, Harold Jacobs. Inspired by Chagall's bold, beautiful brush strokes and Rauschenberg's domestic miscellany, she honed the energetic mixed media practice that drives her work today.
Swallows
Through the Agony and the Ecstasy, We Eat
Through a moratorium of San Diego time, this series, Through the Agony and the Ecstasy, We Eat, honours the intrepid entrepreneurs, chefs, builders, and artists who collaborated in the mid-1980s to craft San Diego’s historic Gaslamp Quarter.
Drawing from personal history, Ingrid Croce captures the Much Muchness of the era. Through layering, the burgeoning Gaslamp district emerges as novel, urban space. The fanciful chandelier with the cheap cane chair; the rubble with the grandeur. Found materials - including historically-preserved Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar wallpaper - evoke the idealism of the Downtown environment.
In Through the Agony and the Ecstasy, We Eat, Croce invites the viewer to consider our city’s legacy. To enjoy late-night conversations between dreamers - to delight in the striving, the imperfection, and the ambition behind the Gaslamp’s utopian vision.
Learning to Fly Like a Bird Again
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
...Leonard Cohen...
At a certain point in my life, when I could not escape my past, it seemed that darkness would take over. I turned to birds - trusting the resilience in their frailty. If we accept the past, it can become a motivation. With it, we soar confidently into the present. We take flight.
