Ron Rodgers -- A Sculptor for the Ages

A sculptor for the Ages/Ron Rodgers and the Transformatives
©2002 by Debora Hill
MedioCom

I held a small bronze sculpture of a man with a beautiful torso, elegant legs and back, but -- he had a triangle for a head. When I looked at the artist he appeared to be faintly smiling. The smile is obscured by a `mountain-man' beard that goes with Ron Rodgers' burly frame. 
He lives on a small property in Sebastopol, California, with his kiln and a little gallery in the dilapidated barn. His work is truly a wonderful mixture of the classical and his own particular and personal vision. The style of the traditional and lovely Apollo and Daphne, gives way to the handsome figure of a man whose left leg is under construction. The latter vision is complete with girders and ladders. Yes, he is a master of the human figure; Apollo and Daphne, which was commissioned for a shopping center, proves that. However, he goes beyond the human figure in his efforts at self expression and that, he feels, is as it should be.
"Well, when I do commission work I have to please the customer, but I'm free to do what I want to with my own art. The large sculpture of the ruined warrior out in front, I consider my Apollo. He's a ruin and he has architectural and found objects in place of limbs, things that remind me of certain body parts or relate to them. My `Freedom' series, with the winged figures, was good for me because I only used to work in large-size. If a figure is life sized or larger, there are so many important decisions to make and everyone has to be the right one. You start working and you'd see something happen, and right then you'd better decide if it's really what you want. It's so big you've got to do it right, and there are so many things that could occur. If you see something happening, you're hesitant to go with it in case that might ruin the whole piece."
In his gallery in the airy barn sit a number of `little' pieces. From the small but strong male figures with geometric symbols replacing the heads (balls, triangles, squares), to the delicate tracery of those winged figures he calls his `Freedom' series, to the skeleton he mentioned, I would never have believed that so much detail could go into something so tiny. 
"Instead of ruining a big piece, when I get a new idea I make another one of these little guys. A lot of them are experiments to see how much I can push the envelope in bronze patterns. Sometimes I just want to see how tiny I can get things; that little skeleton is a good example of that."
Every bronze I saw created a reaction, from his people `under construction' (and aren't we all?) to the relief of a soldier of ancient times (wearing a pair of motorcycle goggles) my personal feelings were provoked. Rodgers points out that this is the measure of true art.
"It took me a long time to realize this, but a lot of the sculpture around today doesn't have any meaning. I'm always looking for the meaning, but what meaning does three blue pyramids have? That's three objects that look good in the mall, and they usually don't have a title in addition to having no meaning. Untitled # 23. I think art has to have a meaning; it has to communicate and transcend the barriers of language and culture, and speak to any viewer who comes along."
Rodgers dates his interest back to a very early point in his life. "My older brother was good in art, and I had to try to be as good as he was. Pursuing it seriously, I graduated from college with an AA degree in commercial Art, and tried to get a job. This was in 1968, in Fremont, and I was stupid enough to go to some employment agencies thinking they'd have jobs for me. They didn't even know what a commercial artist was. I decided to go back to college and get a BA in Fine Art, which I was certain would give me more legitimacy as an artist. Well, guess what ... nothing happened. One of my teachers at S.F. State suggested I go into the Master's Program there; he said he'd send me the paperwork and all I had to do was fill it out. I didn't know at the time that it was very rare for them to invite students into the Master's Program; usually they had to go somewhere else. People who got their BA's there were encouraged not to apply for the Master's there, but I didn't know that."
We saw a number of sketches and learned that he is doing more commission work. The artistry and sensuality in his sketches was reminiscent of the earlier Apollo and Daphne. "This is for a sculpture of Diana for a hotel in Tokyo. They commissioned me for two Pegasus sculptures and two other figures -- this will be one of them. I have her standing on the moon, because she's the moon goddess, and her bow has been designed as the crescent moon, because she's also the Huntress. And this is a deer at the bottom, because the deer is her favorite animal. In sculpting, the most important thing to me is the movement of the piece. Not necessarily to get it exact down to the fingernails, but the overall position, poise and grace; this is what's most important." 
Rodgers recently won three local awards for shows in Sonoma and Marin Counties, and has pieces at a number of galleries in the area. He recently completed a large bronze sculpture for the Auberge d'Soliel restaurant gallery in Napa. In addition to "Diana the Huntress with Hind" and the Pegasus sculptures (now in the Tokyo, Japan Westin hotel lobby) there are two additional Pegasus sculptures Heidelburg Plaza in Taichung, Taiwan and a large bronze relief of a boat, three islands, dolphins and birds; mounted behind an indoor waterfall at the Surabaja, Indonesia Westin lobby.
Rodgers is currently listed in Who's Who in Art, Architecture and Design 2000, Who's Who in the West 2000, Who's Who in the World, 2000 Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century and Outstanding People of the 20th Century, Second Edition.
At the end of 1999, Rodgers became involved in a project in Northern California known simply as 'The Door'. He and another local artist designed a sculpture of a door which appeared to lead down into a hillside. They intended it to represent a door into nature, but some local Christian weirdoes with nasty minds took the notion it must be a door into Hell. After some silliness and good photo ops for the artists, the Sebastopol City Council decided the sculpture would remain, thereby triumphing over ignorance in a small way.
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