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Rona Pondick
Born April 18, 1952
Brooklyn, New York
Nationality American
Education Queens College (BA), Yale University School of Art (Master of Fine Art)
Style sculptor
Awards
  • Anonymous Was a Woman
  • Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship
  • Guggenheim Fellowship

Rona Pondick (born April 18, 1952) is an American sculptor. She lives and works in New York City. Pondick has always been interested in using the human body in her art. She explores different materials in her sculptures, a theme that has been important throughout her career since 1977.

Early Life and Education

Rona Pondick grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She studied art at Queens College in New York, earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1974. Later, in 1977, she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. While at Yale, she learned sculpture from artists like David Von Schlegell and Richard Serra.

Artistic Style and Techniques

Pondick started showing her art in galleries and museums in the mid-1980s. Her sculptures and special art installations have been displayed all over the world. Her artwork can be split into two main styles. First, her early work used pieces that reminded people of the human body. Second, her later work focused on the human body combined with shapes from nature, like plants and animals.

Using Color in Art

Rona Pondick started adding bright colors to her sculptures around 2018. She uses colors like magenta, cyan, and yellow, which are primary colors for printing. She also adds green, blue, black, and white. Her sculptures are made from materials like resin and epoxy. These materials can be partly see-through, making the art look different as the light changes or as you walk around it. Adding color and new materials changed how her art looked and felt.

Head in Tree, 2006-2008
Head in Tree shows Pondick's hybrid sculptures. Here, her life-sized head is part of a tree, made from shiny stainless steel.

How Pondick Makes Her Sculptures

Pondick uses both old and new methods to create her sculptures. She carves, models by hand, makes molds, and casts metal. Sometimes, she uses modern 3D computer technology. This technology helps her create models and change the size of her sculptures. Because of her unique process, it can be a mystery to figure out exactly how her amazing artworks are made.

Early Works: Body Fragments

In the early 1980s, Pondick began making art using pieces that hinted at the human body. These included objects like shoes, baby bottles, and teeth. These early artworks were seen as unique and thought-provoking. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Pondick also created sculptures of beds. Some of these beds had baby bottles tied to them with rope.

Later Works: Hybrid Sculptures

Starting in 1998, Rona Pondick began creating sculptures that mixed parts of animals and plants with parts of her own body. She often cast these sculptures in bronze or stainless steel. She combined traditional hand modeling with computer technology to make these unique hybrid figures.

Merging Animals and the Body

Pondick's hybrid sculptures often feature her own head and hands. For example, in her sculpture Dog (1998-2001), she combined a human head and hands with the body of a dog. This created a figure that looked a bit like a sphinx. Other sculptures combine human parts with animals like a cat, otter, muskrat, monkeys, and a ram. Pondick explained that she uses animal shapes because they are easy to recognize and keep their size no matter where they are placed.

Merging Trees and the Body

In 1995, Pondick made her first tree sculpture that included human teeth scattered on the ground. Her first sculpture that combined a tree and a human was Pussy Willow Tree in 2001. This artwork featured her own tiny head as buds on the tree branches. It was made from aluminum, bronze, and stainless steel. Other tree-human hybrid sculptures include Crimson Queen Maple (2003) and Head in Tree (2008). These sculptures often show her head embedded in clear blocks or stands of different colors, creating strange and interesting moments.

Awards and Recognitions

Rona Pondick has received many awards and grants for her artistic achievements:

  • 2020: American Academy of the Arts and Letters Purchase Award
  • 2016: Anonymous Was a Woman Award
  • 2000: Cultural Department of the City of Salzburg, Kunstlerhaus
  • 1999: Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship
  • 1996: Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship
  • 1992: Guggenheim Fellowship
  • 1991: Mid-Atlantic Arts Grant
  • 1988: Art Matters Inc., New York State Council on the Arts (for Beds installation), Artists Space Grant
  • 1985: Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant
  • 1977: Fannie B. Pardee Prize in Sculpture

Solo Museum Exhibitions

Rona Pondick's work has been featured in many solo exhibitions at museums around the world:

Pondick has also given talks at many universities and institutions, including Yale University, Princeton, Columbia, and art schools in Israel and France.

International Exhibitions

Pondick's art has been shown in major international exhibitions. These include the Lyon, Venice, and Johannesburg Biennales, the Whitney Biennial, and Sonsbeek.

Art in Museum Collections

Rona Pondick's sculptures are part of the permanent collections of many important museums. Some of these include:

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