User:Rosscharles/Charles Ross (artist)

Charles Ross (born 17 December 1937, Philadelphia), is an American sculptor and earthwork artist.

Ross exhibited at the Dwan Gallery between1967 and1971, where both the minimal and land art movements originated. Ross’s first sculptures exhibited with Dwan were transparent skewed and truncated cubes—minimal objects that bent and refracted both light and perception.

In 1969 Ross shifted the emphasis of his artwork from that of the minimal prism object, to the prism as an instrument through which light revealed itself so that the orchestration of spectrum light became the artwork. This began his life long interest in projecting large bands of solar spectrum into living spaces. Ross continues to create site-specific solar spectrum installations made up of arrays of giant prisms specifically tuned to the sun. The solar spectrums continuously changing by the hour and with the seasons as they are propelled through the space by the turning of the Earth. Each artwork is specific to the architecture and its location on the planet. Ross's overall concept is to create a nexus of solar spectrum artworks around the globe so that as the spectrum sets in one location, it is always rising in another. Ross’s permanent solar spectrum installations include: The National Museum of the American Indian, for which he was awarded the Washington Building Congress Award in 2005; Conversations with the Sun (2004), Meiji University, Tokyo; Spectrum 12 (1999), Saitama University, Japan, created in collaboration with architect Riken Yamamoto; The US Federal Courthouse, Tampa, Florida (1998); and Lines of Light, Rays of Color, Plaza of the Americas, Dallas, TX (1985).

In 1992 the French Ministry of Culture commissioned Ross to create The Year of Solar Burns for permanent installation in the Chateau d’Oiron. This 15th century chateau, located in the Loire Valley, is now a contemporary art museum. Each of the 366 planks captured one day of sunlight, a portrait of sunlight drawn by the sun itself. In 1971 Ross discovered that the solar burns traced a double spiral when laid end-to-end. At the chateau the spiral is photo-etched in bronze and inlaid into the floor as part of the installation. A primal solar form, this spiral was later used to study the Anasazi Sun Dagger Calendar at Chaco Canyon.

Ross’s earthwork, Star Axis, is located in the New Mexico desert. It is both architectonic sculpture and naked eye observatory. The approach to building Star Axis involves gathering a variety of star alignments in different time scales and building them into sculptural form. Walking through its chambers you can see how star space relates to human scale and how the space of the stars reaches down into the earth. Ross conceived of Star Axis in 1971 and began building it in 1976 after a 4-year search through the southwest to find the perfect site—a mesa where one stands at the boundary between earth and sky. He’s now finishing Star Axis with a crew of local stonemasons. It’s made with granite, sandstone, bronze, stainless steel, and earth. When completed, Star Axis will be eleven stories high and a fifth of a mile across.