Born in 1953, Ron Crusan grew up in the Post World War II era when the American economy was booming and kids played Army and Cowboys & "Indians" daily until dark. He says they watched Saturday Morning Cartoons, The Lone Ranger, and Combat! on television. The good guys always won and the bad guys always died, no matter how violently. Crusan attended St. Vincent College, in Latrobe, PA and received a BA in Art and BFA in Photography. He attended graduate school at Old Dominion University earning a MA in Humanities. After, he began a 30 year career as an art museum curator and director, during which time he continued to make art. It was during an artist residency in Bulgaria that Crusan realized, that after 30 years of art-making, he "had nothing to say." Crusan made "pretty pictures," but his "search for beauty was empty." Crusan went to Bulgaria with the intent to collect found objects and make “Bulgarian” art. He was immediately struck by the differences in our two cultures. Crusan says, "they threw nothing away and repurposed everything. We discarded everything." Suddenly, beauty disappeared and a search for truth emerged. Crusan says "The biggest truth I discovered was that, at 53 years old, I knew nothing." After a month, he ended a residency that changed his life in direction and artistic purpose. Back home in the states and using found objects, he created the series The American Way in response. The series examined the "crassness of our society"; from Cowboys & "Indians", ‘60s commercialism, Disney, American "gun culture", and a self-serving political system. In 2018, Crusan continued The American Way series , expanding it with other bodies of work which examined our culture, until he began the Loss of Language series. He is actively working on this series through assemblage sculpture, collage, and paintings. In this body of work, he is inspired by the belief that "To be at ease in our culture is to be unaware. To look, but fail to see." An amendment which adds context to Sidney March Chase's quote, “We must try, at all costs, to avoid the vacuum of insulated ease.”