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Hello, I’m Anne McCrossan. I live in St Ives in Cornwall UK. I am a writer and artist working primarily in ceramics.
I focus on themes of origin, identity, meaning and value, looking at who we are, what we make and how we connect.
Before working in ceramics, I had a career in brand advertising, identity and change management. In the early 2000’s that shifted into digital business design, data strategy, digital enablement and work around quantified organisation. Throughout this time, I worked with a wide range of national and international organisations.
I like firing synapses…because I believe that - in the digital world - how we connect, organise and power ourselves as one race, the human race in the face of AI, is a critical issue.
To me, the answer is threefold:
Firstly, by fully harnessing our human ability to craft.
Secondly, by thinking outside the box, using our imagination, being creative.
Thirdly, by learning from the ancients and their wisdoms - as well as other contemporaries who are not like us - and preserving cultural knowledge. These traits of humankind have been collectively accumulated over time through the experiences of the generations that have gone before us. My belief is that they are also pivotal, as the competitive edge we have against the power of AI.
They are essential to us and central to humanity’s future as we witness the emergence of the digital age.
The actions we are all taking today happen in a speck in time - but together they are shaping humanity’s potential and its future at a critical inflection.
Never before have we co-existed with an intelligence equal to, or greater than, ourselves. I am compelled by that thought to make work that records this chapter this way, because we must remember and preserve, within ourselves, what it is to be human.
My interest is in mindful evolution, marking what I see as nothing short of an epochal shift within human history, the point where we transition from an analogue to a digitally-powered civilisation.
My writing and ceramics are thoughts about this time. I use clay - the recording material of choice for millennia - to mark this in a fashion that will hopefully be built to last.
My work experiences influence the approach I take. It supports an ideal - the ideal of a networked world in which open data drives social innovation, digital empowerment is by collective design, and the development of human individuality, agency and dexterity of art and craft coexist for the advancement of everyone.
That matters, because there’s a globally connected world in development.
Thanks for visiting my site. I hope you’ll find it interesting.