Russell Crotty
Russell Crotty arrived at Aurobora to begin a new trajectory in his work. Noted for his drawn globes and astronomical depictions of the sky that the artist first began in 1999, Crotty migrated towards imagery directly associated with field guide studies of boulders and open panoramic vistas.
Field guide descriptions – buckets, cavities, friction-grip—find there way scrawled in the artist’s hand into his large composition, reminding the viewer of the esoteric nomenclature used by scramblers and climbers. In addition to the boulder images from his field guide suite, Crotty created works depicting panoramic, landscape vistas that emerge in long, narrow bands from the lower portion of the paper. Within some of these panoramas, Crotty scratches out text (similar to text in his earlier globe drawings) which embellishes the compositions and ties them contextually to his other work.
During his return visit to Aurobora in 2008, Crotty focused on a collection of driftwood culled over the years from hidden surf spots and lake shores. Titled Specimens, Crotty drew the individual shapes of wood on mylar and then used these as stencils to print images directly on the paper to capture the essence of a Northern California that is slowly vanishing.
August 2017 found Crotty returning to Aurobora with new works based on his observations of the solar eclipse and the landscape of Idaho’s Wood River Valley. These works (on paper and wood panel) feature embedded nature drawings that have been collaged alongside plastic material and embalmed in bio-resin that give these compositions an exaggerated retro feel. In many ways this work reflects the artist’s own artistic evolution–from documenting past adventures in various landscapes, seascape surf spots & driftwood beaches, to astronomical observations of the night skies and adroit commentary that extends beyond astro-time, sci-fi categorization and into a contextualizing of future history.
AUROBORA PROJECTS
August 2006
March 2008
August 2017
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Centre Georges Pompidou; Musee National D’Art Moderne, Paris; Valencia Arte Contemporaneo e Inversion, S.L. Valencia, Spain; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; New York Public Library, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco Fine Arts Museum , CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna, CA; ASU Nelson Fine Arts Center, Tempe, AZ; Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, NY; The Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, County Mayo, Ireland