The Art of Connection: A Conversation with Paula Crown
At Intersect Aspen this year, we had the privilege of speaking with Paula Crown, whose work bridges the personal and the universal, transforming everyday objects into profound meditations on human connection, environmental responsibility, and the voices that shape our world. In a world increasingly focused on the individual, artist Paula Crown reminds us that even our most solitary moments leave marks on the collective landscape.
Solo Together: Finding Portraits in Plastic
Crown's "Solo Together" series emerged from an unexpectedly intimate observation: how people interact with disposable cups. Those ubiquitous red Solo cups that populate college parties and backyard barbecues became, in Crown's hands, portraits of human energy and emotion.
"I remember people holding it in a certain way and sort of transferring their energy to it," Crown explains. She began collecting cups that had been twisted from anxiety, smashed in celebration, or carefully peeled apart—each bearing the unique imprint of its handler. Taking 350 cups, she cast each one in plaster and painted them, arranging them on the floor with names like "Never Good as Dad," "I Lean," and "Failing Out."
What appears at first glance to be scattered cups, reveals itself as something more profound: a meditation on how each of us affects the world, often without realizing it. "We each make a mark," Crown notes. "Gravity reminds us of each of us and we all have some unique ability to affect the world in a good way or a bad way."
The series also carries an environmental conscience. Crown discovered that the disposable cup was invented during the Spanish flu epidemic at the turn of the 20th century, when shared drinking vessels spread disease. When she scaled up the work—creating 10-foot-tall versions at Rockefeller Center in New York—the oversized cups became monuments to objects whose time has passed. "Now we have to find something else because we can't afford to use this anymore," she reflects.
The Reverse Side Also Has a Reverse Side
Crown's latest work ventures into entirely new territory: bronze bells. Collaborating with the White Chapel Bell Factory—a 500-year-old institution that created the Liberty Bell and Big Ben—Crown joined Conrad Shawcross and Grayson Perry in creating a series of four bells, with three to be sold to benefit the foundry.
The project holds particular resonance in our current moment. After World War II, there was enormous demand for bells, as the Nazis had melted down community bells for weaponry. Now, as Crown observes, "so many of our voices, so many institutions are being closed down and bells are voices."
Her design process reveals the conceptual depth that characterizes her practice. Initially envisioning an inverted Solo cup (the circular continuity in her work is striking), Crown was drawn to a Japanese epigram: "The reverse side also has a reverse side." This phrase, with its layers of meaning, speaks to the complexity beneath binary thinking—the nuanced reality that exists beyond simple polarization.
"It's not binary. It's complicated," Crown emphasizes. "Will we take that time to go and explore and have those conversations?"
Following What Calls to You
When asked how she balances her art practice with her work in conservation and philanthropy, Crown offers wisdom that extends far beyond the art world: "Follow the things that you like. You don't know why you gather photographs or why you collect wooden boxes or you collect whatever it is, but there's something there."
She traces this instinct back to childhood—her own memories of peeling wallpaper and putting her father's classical records on the turntable, creating what she calls "great art" that "didn't get received very well." These early impulses, she suggests, are the seeds of our authentic passions, present before we even know someone is watching.
Art as Conversation
Throughout our discussion, Crown returns repeatedly to the idea that art is enhanced by conversation with the observer. She delights when people standing among her Solo cup installations share their own interpretations, taking ownership of the work's meaning. This generosity toward viewer interpretation reflects a larger philosophy: that we are all constantly affecting one another, creating ripples we may not even perceive.
Whether working with disposable cups or bronze bells, Crown creates work that resonates—literally and figuratively. Her bells, she notes, move our bodies in ways that digital alarms cannot. They remind us that we are physical beings in a physical world, connected to each other through vibrations we can feel in our bones.
In uncertain times, when institutions falter and voices are silenced, Crown's bells offer something vital: a call to presence, to complexity, to the recognition that beneath every surface lies something deeper. As she prepares her bell to "ring in the world," one can't help but feel we need its voice now more than ever.