John Crawford is the son of Ralston Crawford. After studying for a bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, he moved to Italy in 1976 and was apprenticed for ten years to Tuscan blacksmiths, making forged-steel sculpture and tools in a sixteenth-century water-powered forge. Sine his return to New York City, he has made sculpture using large- and small-scale industrial forging and machining techniques. HIs work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including the Sculpture Center, the National Academy of Design, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, and Queens College, CUNY, all in New York City; LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton, New York; and Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Massachusetts. He cites exposure to his father’s ideas and the shapes of Italian farm tools as being two of the largest influences on his life and early work. His research on his father’s art has focused primarily on the photographs as a lens through which to study Ralston Crawford’s paintings, lithographs, and drawings.