About Bob Crewe
Bob Crewe (1930 - 2014) was a legendary record producer for the Four Seasons and co-writer of many hit songs as well as being a visual artist. Bob had one of the most innovative and varied careers in pop music and appears as a supporting character in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Jersey Boys. He crossed genres with fluidity, approaching music visually, painting and sculpture aurally and back, forth and sideways. A true original, he carved out his own distinctive voice in the studios of sound and sight.*
“My work was always instinctual. I believe in chance, thrift shops, found objects. In crafting records, for instance, I might hear an old Harry James riff and weave it into a Freddie Cannon song. The sound of someone slamming the studio door might become the hook. I view art the same. In the fifties I was close to Otto Fenn, the fashion photographer, who introduced me to Andy Warhol. I was working with linen and burlap, applying resin, molding, hardening and covering it with sand, beads and shells. Very organic, very physical. Andy considered my stuff edgy and arranged a show at Bodley Gallery. Reviews were strong, interest high, but in the sixties the music business shot even higher.”
- Bob Crewe, 1968
The Bob Crewe Program in Art & Music at the Maine College of Art & Design was made possible by the largest gift in the College’s 135 year history, a $3 million grant from the Crewe Foundation. The program prepares students to cross traditional boundaries as musicians, performers, sound artists, and artists.
* writing credit, Donna McNeil