Ron Nagle
| Ron Nagle | |
|---|---|
| Born |
February 21, 1939 San Francisco |
| Nationality | United States |
| Education | B.F.A., San Francisco State College, 1961 |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Awards |
Arts and Letters Award American Craft Council Fellowship National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship |
Ron Nagle (b. San Francisco, California, February 21, 1939) is an American sculptor, musician and songwriter. He is known for small-scale, refined sculptures of great detail and compelling color.
Nagle lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Born in San Francisco in 1939, Nagle was introduced to ceramics by his mother at an early age. He practiced ceramics in high school and developed an interest in jewelry-making which he pursued into his college years. Nagle enrolled as an English major at San Francisco State College, but later switched to the school's BFA program and graduated with a focus in ceramics in 1961.
Between 1961 and 1978, Nagle taught ceramics at San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts, as well as at the University of California Berkeley, where he apprenticed to Peter Voulkos, a core member of the Abstract Expressionist Ceramics. In 1978, Nagle began a professorship at Mills College, where he taught ceramics for over 30 years.
His involvement in West Coast culture—surfing, rock music, hot rod culture—is integral to both his art and music. Nagle owned a 1948 Ford Coupe to which he applied 40 coats of British racing green, sanding between each layer to achieve depth of color. This same fanaticism is evident in the detailed color and texture of his sculptures.
Ron Nagle has practiced ceramics for over 50 years. He has worked extensively with the typology of the vessel—specifically the cup—and pushed through the utilitarian concerns of traditional craft into formal consideration of the medium. His small-scale, intimately sized sculptures are often composite of multiple elements and involve a confluence of techniques and materials including slip-casting, airbrushing, hand-molding, traditional and non-traditional glazing, scalp-metal, polyurethane, wax, and epoxy.
Drawing is fundamental to Nagle's practice, and he considers his work from a two-dimensional, flat point of view. This resonates with his stated interest in painting, where he cites influences such as Giorgio Morandi, Cy Twombly, and Billy Al Bengston.
His work is associated with the California Clay Movement, and Nagle is often included in exhibitions concerning Abstract Expressionism. Although Nagle has shied away from association with the traditional craft of ceramics, he has noted the influence of his contemporary sculptors working in the medium, such as Kenneth Price, as well as such vernaculars as Japanese Momoyama ceramics and 1940s American restaurant ware. Nagle also looks further, mining uncanny sources such as cartoons, graffiti, food arrangement and fashion for inspiration.
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