Go with the Crow is the art project of Ross Crow, a writer, visual designer, and musician based in Austin, TX. Beginning in October of 2022, the project arose from a succinct conversation with his friend Jo, who offered him the imperative, “just sketch,” which has guided the project ever since. What began as an 9-year struggle with illustrator’s block has since blossomed into a small cult tradition, an ongoing experiment that, like a quantum chameleon, has morphed and manifested in diverse mediums, from hand-drawn sketches, to clay figures and stop motions, and recently culminating in Photoshop-produced collages.
Drawing inspiration from various sources, ranging from exotic fish to 90’s cartoons, international graffiti, and comic book scans to lo-fi internet arcana, Ross refuses form and formula at every turn, creating a portfolio of wildly different characters and scenes. On a given day, he may produce a sober and carefully-detailed depiction of a frog perched on a leaf. The following day, feeling burnt out from the attention poured into mulling over a reference image, he’ll switch gears sharply in the opposite direction, giving life to a tortured, cybernetic creature whose sharp lines pounce from the page.
Besides producing art, Ross also loves volunteering and civic engagement, as well as long, contemplative hikes in the outdoors. An inspiring green thumb, he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, be it planting bur oaks with TreeFolks or pulling weeds at the Festival Beach Food Forest. He is as much a dog person as a cat person, appreciating the yin-yang of chaos and subtlety that each brings. In the evenings, whether or not he’s sketching, you can find him listening to videos about semiconductors and other matters in the tech world.
