Ron Fondaw received a B.F.A. in ceramics from the Memphis College of Art and obtained his M.F.A. from the University of Illinois, Urbana. He has taught at three major institutions including the Washington University, in St, Louis where he taught for 25 years. Prior to that he was on the faculty at University of North Carolina in Capel Hill and The University of Miami, FL.
Fondaw works with a variety of methods and media from ephemeral site-specific adobe sculpture to one of a kind ceramics, cast metal, drawings and paintings. His current interest is in expression of unseen forces that shape our culture.
Fondaw has worked in Japan, Denmark, China, and Italy as well as numerous other locations around the United States. He has received numerous distinctions including the Guggenheim Award for sculpture, The Nation Endowment for the Arts, and The Pollack-Krasner Award
His works can be seen in several major collections including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
Working with clay is spontaneous, holistic, intuitive, and quantum. It is a process that mirrors the plasticity of our own thinking. Ceramic processes are the same as those that continuously shape our planet – melting, cooling, crystallizing and weathering back into the earth. As an artist, I strive to get out of the way of these processes and allow the material to express its essence as it makes its transformation.
Experimentation is critical to my work and abstraction is my preference because it holds less bias. When we can’t identify something we recognize from the world outside, we have a chance to discover something new within.
I want to position objects on the edge of what is acceptable beauty and what is not. It’s at that point of tension that the work is most challenging and aesthetically pleasing to me. When I’m working with clay, I’m keenly aware that I have something alive in my hands and I give it room to speak. Once it’s fired, that life transforms to aesthetic energy, perceptible by the viewer.