Dr. Donald Fortescue is a Professor of Art and Design at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. He was born in Sydney, Australia, where he studied zoology and botany for his first degree, and worked as a botanical consultant and scientific illustrator for many years.

Donald creates sculptural ‘instruments’, installations, video, sound works and images which reframe our view of the natural world. He is interested in revealing energies and events which are beyond our usual perception together with the human experiences and histories which underlie our understanding of the world around us.

Donald recently completed a Ph.D. at the Australian National University where his research focused on the congruencies between the methodologies, aspirations and limits of science and art and involved field work in the Arctic (the Svalbard Archipelago) and the Antarctic. The Antarctic project was conducted in collaboration with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole and with the support of a US National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Fellowship. Donald’s close engagement with high energy particle astrophysics is continuing in a new collaboration with the Km3NeT Neutrino Observatory in the Mediterranean Sea.