Russell Crotty

Russell Crotty (born 1956) is an American visual artist whose work explores the intersections of nature, science, and personal experience, focusing themes of amateur astronomy, coastal surfing culture, and their associated landscapes. Using a signature style rooted in obsessive ballpoint pen-and-ink drawing, Crotty pushes traditional "works on paper" into three-dimensional, minimal sculptural installations with his paper-coated suspended globes and large-scale books. His art balances rigorous, objective scientific documentation with poetic, idiosyncratic commentary. Lives in Southern California.

Early life and education Russell Crotty was born in San Rafae l, California, in 1956. He grew up in a creative environment, with parents who were practicing artists; his father was a sculptor and his mother a ceramist and jeweler; they were active in the Bay Area modern art scene and encouraged him to pursue his own creativity. As Crotty recalls, “I always knew I wanted to be an artist." "My father used to give me 500 sheets of paper a month, and I would go through it doing drawings.” In 1978, Crotty earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) and then moved to Southern California to attend the University of California, Irvine, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in 1980.

Astronomical works As a member of his local astronomy club during his youth, Crotty was fascinated by the night sky. In 1994, he rekindled that interest by building his own observatory in the Santa Monica Mountains, which he called the Solstice Peak Observatory; it housed a ten-inch f/8 Newtonian reflector telescope in a small, corrugated metal shed. Unfortunately, the observatory burned down during a Southern California wildfire in 2007. During that time, Crotty began making empirical scientific illustrations sketched directly from his telescope eyepiece; he later published them in The Journal of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers. His illustrations helped professional astronomers by capturing fine celestial details that standard astronomical photography often fails to resolve.

By 2000, Crotty realized that two-dimensional pictorial conventions constrained his flat, circular drawings and that the sky is an expansive, 3D space rather than a flat backdrop; he decided to push his paper drawings into the room and create suspended globes. He had the core sphere fabricated in Lucite, then had conservators professionally cover it with archival paper, which he would draw on. The finished works, ranging from 8 to 72 inches (20 to 180 centimeters) in diameter, hang from the ceiling at eye level; they resemble a small galaxy of planets, while conceptually blending minimal sculpture with drawing.

In 2001, Crotty began compiling his detailed drawings into massive, handmade books that mimic the sequential and interactive nature of stargazing and mapping. They featured his illustrations of the night sky, stars, constellations, planetary landscapes, and coastal rock formations in blue-black ballpoint pen and watercolor washes. He presented them as gallery installations: oversized volumes several feet long, laid flat on large museum-style tables. Viewers were invited to interact with the work by turning the pages slowly and cumulatively as an astronomer would do when logging long hours of observation. Pompidou (Paris), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), He participated in "A Grain of Dust A Drop of Water: The 5th Gwangju Biennale" in 2004.

Awards 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 2008 Artists' Fellowship Programme, The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, County Mayo, Ireland 1999 Visual Arts Fellowship, Peter Reed Foundation, NY, NY 1991 Visual Arts Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts

Publications Campbell, Clayton, "Russell Crotty at Shoshana Wayne Gallery," Artweek, April (2009), p. 16 Sheets, Hilarie; “The Big Draw,” ARTnews, January, p. 98-103 Sheets, Hilarie M., "The Universe at the Tip of His Ballpoint Pen", The New York Times (May 2, 2004)