A few other independent sources documented Crist’s work over the years. Excerpts below, with links to the original archived pages.
Memory Alpha (Star Trek wiki)
Crist Ballas is profiled on Memory Alpha, the official Star Trek wiki, for his work on J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek as part of the Proteus Make-up FX Team:
“Crist Ballas is a special make-up effects artist who worked on Star Trek as part of the Proteus Make-up FX Team. Hailing from (and currently residing in) St. Paul, Minnesota, Ballas specializes in natural, realistic make-up effects. He owns and operates Metamorphosis, a full-service make-up shop and studio. For Star Trek, Ballas worked on the character Keenser, portrayed by Deep Roy, and a Talosian who was ultimately deleted from the final movie.
Ballas spent four years as a make-up artist on the cult television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 and supplied make-up effects for the 1996 feature film spin-off of that show. He also worked on five films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger: Jingle All the Way, Batman & Robin, End of Days, The 6th Day, and Collateral Damage. His other film credits include The 13th Warrior (1999), A Simple Plan, Drop Dead Gorgeous (starring Kirstie Alley and Kirsten Dunst), Paramount Pictures’ Double Jeopardy (1999, starring Ashley Judd and Bruce Greenwood), Reindeer Games, Sweet Land, and The Warlords. Other projects include The Forbidden Kingdom (2008), The Love Guru (2008), and the WB reality series Beauty and the Geek.”
Source: Memory Alpha, “Crist Ballas” (archived copy), available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.
The Growler Magazine: “Crist Ballas, The Mad Scientist of St. Paul”
In February 2020, The Growler, a Minnesota arts and culture magazine, published a feature profile of Crist by writer David Scheller, with photography by Madalyn Rowell. The piece is a tour of Crist’s home studio and a look at how he got started in the craft.
The article describes his home lab — a vintage Frankenstein poster, acrylic prop eyes he made and labeled for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlize Theron, an original Gizmonic Institute patch from his years on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that he says he treasures more than his awards, a full-scale Arnold-as-Mr.-Freeze bust, and an anatomically accurate breast prosthetic he developed as a University of Minnesota project to help train doctors and patients to identify cancerous tissue by feel. It traces his origin story back to seeing the original 1931 Frankenstein at age six, his mother taking him to the library afterward, and discovering Richard Corson’s Stage Makeup and books on Lon Chaney — the start of a self-taught path into the craft years before he formally trained under Dick Smith.