17 June - 29 July

RUSSELL CROTTY
Twilight in the West

L.A.-based artist Russell Crotty makes ink drawings of nighttime skies
based upon his own astronomical observations. Some of the resulting
drawings are two-dimensional, some are three.

Flat drawings made within telescope-view-inspired circular fields are
one way he interprets his sightings. Merging traditions of drawing and
sculpture provides another. Russell marks out elongated spaces of the
cosmos on paper-covered fiberglass spheres. These "globes" invert our
notions of planet and sky. Imagine a planetarium ceiling seen from
without rather than within. We become the boundless observers of a
contained universe.

Washes of watercolor highlight the ink drawing in his work. In some
pieces, hand-lettered text graffitis his nocturnal landscapes. Whether
the language is from Russell's own diary of observational experience,
or is borrowed from real estate sales brochures, he often brings atten-
tion to the terrestrial developments that threaten the wild places from
which he looks.
 
LORDY RODRIGUEZ
Landscapes

Lordy Rodriguez has made a career of drawing maps. His first carto-
graphic project, representations of each of the United States as he
wished them to be, came from a desire to envision his own personal
sense of place and history. His newest drawings, based on tech-
niques of topographical plotting, explore our reliance on the con-
structed realities of maps.

From Mapquest and GPS navigation systems to the Doppler 3000, we
relate to our environment through abstracted representations. In
Rodriguez's world, jagged, swooping or swirling forms describe
drifting silt dunes, volcanic island chains, underwater trenches and
evidence of tectonic shifts. Pared-down to brightly-colored contours -
without symbols, direction, text or indicia of scale - his representa-
tions of place are abstracted beyond map-making traditions. Rather
than tools for navigation or finding one's place, these drawings are a
dizzying realm where one is pulled in and becomes lost.

 

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Spanish Trails, 2005
 
er, 10 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 2 1/5 inches
 
Volcano, 2006