Today we’d like to introduce you to Rusty Wallace.
Hi Rusty, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in western Kentucky surrounded by resourceful, creative family members. I started drawing when I was a toddler, and have loved it ever since. My curiosity as a child led me to take apart my toys to figure out how they worked, undoubtedly influenced by my family’s love of working with their hands, creatively problem-solving, and fixing things (cars, household items, etc.) when needed. Both of my parents are creative-minded people with a strong visual and musical sensibility. My grandparents on my mom’s side were furniture makers, and my dad’s mom was very creative in making quilts and knitting. Growing up, I was surrounded by tools, and people who made things. My parents fostered my creativity and encouraged me to follow my heart and dreams when college was on the horizon. As a kid, I showed aptitudes and talents that wouldn’t make sense until my early years in college. I routinely helped my dad work on things, build things, and asked too much questions about why we were doing what, because I loved figuring out the why’s and hows. My parents encouraged me to go to college, and pursue my dreams. I had no idea what was to come in the next two years.
My first semester of college was the beginning of an incredible, awe-inspiring and empowering journey that opened so many flood gates for me. Initially, I was in a track to become a mechanical engineer. I loved science, and math,, especially geometry, so was following the recommended path testing and mentorship programs suggested best fit my aptitudes. I had one elective that semester and chose art. It would be the first serious art class I had taken, since high school was a bit lacking in that area.
I was fortunate, and am indebted to my professor for that class, Robert Williams. He opened my eyes to so much, and encouraged me immensely my first two years of college at a small liberal arts college, Georgetown College, outside of Lexington, KY. Was blown away by the vast history of ideas and art that I had no knowledge of previously. I spent countless hours in the library just sitting down among the stacks and pulling down nearly every art book and fed my visual vocabulary. I felt I had so much to catch up on, and was fascinated by all I was learning. By the end of my second year, I knew I had to pursue art. I changed my major, and through a series of fortunate events, transferred to nearby University of Kentucky. Little did I know that the art department there was fantastic and so much to offer my curious mind. I signed up for Sculpture 1 with Jack Gron and continued to grow, learn, and expand. The late Mr Williams and Jack Gron had a massive effect and influence on my art journey and I am forever grateful for them. That fall semester at UK began an intense learning experience that continues to feed me today. I discovered I really loved sculpture AND drawing, and graduated with a BFA in Sculpture, Drawing and Ceramics, with a minor in Art History. My confidence grew exponentially, talents and aptitudes that were just there as a kid all of the sudden found their purpose. The critiques led by Jack and the sculpture community there were amazing and taught me how to think, speak and participate in constructive, rigorous critical thinking. Such and incredible time with so many fellow students and other faculty that made for such a rich experience.
I had almost a year off and then began graduate school at UGA. My three years there provided great experiences where I had amazing teaching opportunities, mentors, friends and traveling that expanded and enriched my art journey in so many ways. Halfway through grad school. I went on the Cortona Study Abroad Program in Italy. Amazing time and experience that influences my still. I was fortunate to teach all levels of drawing, and had the privilege of being the first person to teach a year of Advanced Drawing who wasn’t a full-time faculty member. The Dodd Professorial Chair then was Susan Hauptman, who I studied with and was studio assistant to. She was intense, diligent and generous as an artist and mentor to me. So thankful for my time with her.
I set about to take full advantage of the precious time and the community of art-minded people around me those three years, and did so the best I could. I taught for a year afterwards in the art department, and then went on to teach part- and full-time for a decade.
That first year after completing my MFA, I realized I needed to give myself a decade to let my work mature and develop. From the second year of undergrad, until the year after graduate school, I was on this amazing journey of discovery, expansion, and fine-tuning. From that point, I have been on a path of faith to best serve my work and artistic ideas. The decade commitment to my work’s development and expansion worked better than I imagined, and paved the way for my long-term goals as an artist. One goal that I set after the decade-long commitment was to get my work into a museum collection without the aid of a gallery. Thanks to Michael Rooks, at The High, that dream came true in 2015. The purchase of a drawing for the Permanent Collection at The High came out of a one-on-one visit between Michael and myself at a solo show I had in Atlanta in 2014, entitled “Rusty Wallace//Dialogue, a survey of 13 years of my work.
After living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and north GA, I have left and returned to Athens, GA twice. I continue to work in my studio on drawings, paintings, and sculpture, further developing and serving my work.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
My journey has been interesting, inspiring, expansive, empowering and eye-opening, but nothing of a smooth road. It has been filled with all kinds of challenges and struggles. When I finished my undergraduate degree, I was the first person on either side of my family to have a college degree. Charting a path into unknown territory always provides you with lots of unexpected things and surprises and head-scratching problems. The last 25 years since finishing my MFA (gulp!) have been such an adventure and more like a step of faith over and over again. This process has inspired some of my neon-backlit sculptures – the idea of stepping into “the black” – the unknown. I now have the breadth and depth of work, skills, commitment, confidence, and all-important questions and curiosity to enable me to forge ahead in pursuit of and in service of my work. I’m thankful for all of the opportunities and lessons along the way so far and look forward to the continued journey ahead.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My work began with a fascination of the power of art to open up new ways of seeing and thinking. When I began college, I was ignorant about art, especially regarding Modernism. My art professors opened the flood gates for me to the power and history of art and ideas, and I felt I had a lot of catching up to do. Learning about and experiencing that power sparked a desire to know more about how content, semiotics, color, and materials can work together in art. From there, I began exploring moments in the continuum of art and culture that have been transformative, and followed the thread of continuity of expansive ideas. Since 2000, I have worked on a growing body of work that says “yes”, that seeks to expand dialogue through works that stand on their own, but also inform each other. I strive to get out of the way, in order to serve the ideas, as well as integrate craftsmanship of materials with concepts.
I am committed to developing my work – giving it space to breathe and sometimes gestate – and pursuing the potential of faith in uncertainty, along the dimly lit path of creativity that hopefully leads to discovery, learning, meaning, and vitality.
Major themes in my work include the duality of light and dark, logic and intuition, dialogue with art and ideas across time, and work that points to expansive ideas. The duality of light and dark has been present in my work for over two decades. It has roots in spirituality, ethics, power dynamics, social constructs, and the capacity for curiosity to arise from contrast. Logic and intuition has an equally long presence in my work, influenced by my reflection on the creative process itself, as well as their duality in ways of knowing. Dialogue with art and ideas across time informs my work by providing a springboard for thought, questions, and relationships that continue to be relevant and reimagined. And, I aim for all of these themes to work together as facets of seeing and thinking in expansive ways, rather than being a singular thesis or reductive.
Currently, I am working on groups of drawings and paintings that continue to explore the themes mentioned above through symbolic color, transposition of art references, symbolic shapes of panels for paintings, and subtlety of texture and surface to entice the viewer to look more closely. Additionally, I am working on sculptures in space that invite the viewer to move in and around the elements of the work. In moving in and around the work, the viewer has opportunity to discover alignment and relationships, from certain vantage points, of elements that are transparent, reflective, opaque, and translucent. These relationships and qualities hopefully spark more curiosity and encourage the viewer to look and see more.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
As an artist, I have to deal with varying degrees of risk in order to creatively problem solve and work towards particular goals or results for a given piece or group of artworks. I think if you are not taking some level of risk in trying to serve your work in interest of being truly creative, then you are at best engaging in some mode of repetition or worse merely making something that looks like art. The element of fear in creative work and problem solving as an artist is something that will always be there to contend with. Recognizing that, and then working with or through it, is one way to tackle some facets of risk taking.
Throughout my art journey I have taken risks to some degree. One notable risk I took, which didn’t seem like a scary risk to me, was to give myself a decade to let my work mature and develop after finishing grad school. It was a risk in the sense that I turned down a few galleries who wanted me to come on board. Being fresh out of grad school and teaching in the art school as an adjunct faculty member (translation – insultingly low pay) I could’ve really used the potential income and afforded opportunities that galleries could have brought. My conviction that this was best for my work made this seem like less of a risk and more staying true to my work and long term goals. Looking back, there is no other way to effectively do that, and I don’t regret it in any way, but the short term benefits were tempting.
I have a steadfast commitment to my work and its quality, integrity, and value. I see more risk in falling for low-hanging fruit than in staying true to my work and goals. The risk versus reward equation for me has always been a strong ethical one aligned with why, how, and what I make in service of my art and ideas. To compromise that would, to me, be a massive risk. One of my late mentors, Robert Irwin, helped me in many ways in conversations over the years, but when I asked him what is the one piece of advice he would give a younger artist, he said, “always take the longer stick.” Meaning, make you sure you take care of yourself, because not everyone else will.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rustywallaceart.com
- Instagram: rwallaceart
Image Credits
All photos courtesy of the artist except for last photo (5 gold leaf wall pieces) by Ian McFarlane.
