This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following biography was submitted by John David Rigsby, Jr., son of
the artist. The author is Lisa Rigsby Peterson, daughter of the
artist, and owner of the copyright of the biography.
John David Rigsby was born on October 10, 1934, the seventh child of an
Alabama Depression-era sharecropper’s son. He and his family
moved frequently, from one one-room structure to another, often with no
running water, no plumbing, no heat but the stove. His father was
killed in a car accident when Rigsby was just 9 years old. Life
for the remaining eight family members proved tumultuous and difficult
-- food wasn’t plentiful, nor money. The family moved from place
to place, following work -- Rigsby attended 30 different schools before
graduating from high school. Despite living in poverty, Rigsby
demonstrated academic and artistic aptitude at a young age. Two
oil paintings on covers ripped off of old books that he painted when he
was eight years old show the promise of an imaginative and gifted eye.
Rigsby was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1953. As he later wrote,
“When basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, was over, I was
told to go out and find a job. Jasper Johns was painting visual
aids for the 28th Regimental Headquarters. He suggested the Band
Training Unit.” Rigsby played the clarinet in that unit, and
after 2 years of service, he enrolled at the University of Alabama on
the G.I. Bill to study art. After just two years, he left school
and followed his mentor (and one of the greatest and longest-lasting
influences on his art), Japanese artist and U of A art instructor Tatsu
Heima, to New York City. Heima introduced him to Isamu Noguchi
and suggested that Rigsby work as Noguchi’s assistant. Instead,
Rigsby chose a job as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, since
“the notion of seeing all of that art appealed more to me than the
boring task of studio assistant.” The opportunity was a rich one
for Rigsby. He had a chance to study the masters, and cited
Rembrandt with his simplicity and elegance as another of the most
important influences on his work.
In the years between 1957 and 1963, when Rigsby eventually earned his
BFA in sculpture, the artist traveled back and forth between New York
and Tuscaloosa, alternating study with forays into the fertile New York
art scene. Rigsby exhibited some of his early sculpture work in
1958 at a small New York gallery, which was also exhibiting the work of
Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Theodore Stamos. Shortly
thereafter, searching for an educational venue closer to New York City,
Rigsby visited New Haven, Connecticut, and spent an afternoon speaking
with Josef Albers at Yale. Albers agreed to accept Rigsby into the Yale
program on the condition that he take freshman drawing all over
again. A brilliant opportunity, but, in Rigsby’s words, “When it
was time to register, I was hitchhiking back to Alabama, looking for
food and shelter.”
Rigsby had his first one-man show at the University of Alabama in
1959. A visiting critic from New York, J.F. Goosen, reviewed the
show and wrote “here is a talent which produces art because that is the
thing for a gifted person to do. In his effortless ease of
conception and execution, he has already achieved a goal that eludes
many artists for a lifetime.” Finally, in 1963, Rigsby
received his degree in sculpture, dissolved a short-lived marriage,
visited his family, packed up his car and headed permanently for New
York. That year, his work was included in a group show at the
Delgado Museum in New Orleans – which led to a one-man exhibit at the
Delgado in 1964. During 1964, Rigsby took drawing classes at
Columbia University, and worked at the General Post Office at
night. He met his future wife, Linda Palmieri, and married.
In 1965, his daughter Lisa was born, followed in 1966 by the birth of
his son, John David Jr.
In 1966, Rigsby had a successful one-man show at the Pietrantonio
Gallery in New York. Shortly thereafter, he and the family moved
to Tunis, Tunisia at the suggestion of a colleague, who urged him to
“come paint by the light of Klee.” Rigsby worked for the United
States Information Agency as a teacher, and he spent the next year and
a half painting over ninety paintings inspired by the smells, light,
and Phoenician and Roman art surrounding him. He also executed a
number of character and landscape drawings, capturing the Tunisian way
of life. During his time in Tunisia, Rigsby’s work was shown
there in two major exhibits.
Upon the family’s return to the U.S. in 1968, Rigsby once again
exhibited at the Pietrantonio Gallery. Later that year, Rigsby
enrolled in Southern Connecticut State College’s Urban Studies program,
earning a master’s degree in 1970. During his time at SCSU,
Rigsby worked as the city of Bridgeport’s Curator of Exhibits, driving
a mobile art gallery from schools to neighborhood fairs and housing
projects. After completing his degree, Rigsby had an exhibit at
the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia. This exhibit caught the
attention of a member of the search committee looking to hire an artist
for a newly-developed program in neighboring South Carolina.
In 1970, Rigsby was selected as the first Artist-in-Residence in the
state of South Carolina for the National Endowment for the Arts Artists
in Schools program. His work with the newly-integrated students
at Beaufort (SC) High School over the term of his residency precluded
substantial work on his own art. He did, however, set up a
studio in downtown Beaufort, and was able to create a modest number of
paintings, which were included in exhibits at the Columbia Museum in
South Carolina in 1971 and Yale University in 1973.
At the end of his residency in 1974, Rigsby was named the National
Visual Arts Coordinator of the Artists in Schools program for the NEA,
a post he held for two years. In this position, Rigsby traveled
the country, reviewing grant applications, meeting with state leaders
in government, education and the arts to promote program concepts and
explore local opportunities. The message he repeated over and
over again echoed that of one of the other major influences on Rigsby
as an artist – Ruth Asawa Lanier, whose words taught him that all of
the work that the artist does is the artist’s work, not simply the
paintings he creates. In his capacity as National Coordinator, as
well as many times in the future, Rigsby stressed that artists function
in the same way as any other person in society, and deserved the same
respect and place for their work as did all other professions.
After two years traveling the country, Rigsby was ready for a change,
saying “for the first time in my adult life, there was not a body of
paintings to show for the years put into my work.”
In 1976, a summer retreat to the mountain community of Central City,
Colorado, led to a permanent relocation. Eventually settling in
the small town of Evergreen, Rigsby followed his own advice about
artists becoming actively involved in their communities, and he
established the Evergreen Visual Arts Center. The Center provided
working space for artists, classes for adults and children, and, most
importantly, a place for Rigsby to create his own work. Buoyed by
the opportunity to concentrate once again on his art, and inspired by
his new surroundings, Rigsby entered an extremely prolific period in
his career. In 1977, he organized a traveling exhibition of his
paintings, which showed at the Kimball Arts Center in Utah, the Kennedy
Center in Washington, D.C., and the Arvada Center in Colorado.
1978 brought more exhibits, notably in Aspen and Denver, as Rigsby’s
work continued. He took an extended trip to visit his mentor,
Tatsu Heima, in Japan, where he climbed Mt. Fuji, followed by travels
to Tehran, Delhi, and several European countries. He chronicled
his impressions from his travels in a small collection of paintings
upon his return to the U.S. – the beginning of a practice which would
continue through the rest of his life. In 1979, Rigsby’s marriage
failed, and at the same time he lost the lease to his Evergreen studio
to redevelopment plans. In response to the personal chaos around
him, Rigsby began a series of what he called “hard-nosed process
paintings,” the watercolor paintings of dots which marked his work from
this period. The paintings gained him an NEA Individual Artist
grant in 1980, as well as a Yaddo fellowship in 1981. The polka
dot paintings were followed by a series of cupcake-like images, again
examining space and color.
During the early 1980s, Rigsby lived in a suite of old dentists’
offices in a rundown part of Denver, with a studio in an area that
reminded him of the Bowery in New York. In 1984, Rigsby
founded the Progreso Gallery in the building where he lived, using the
space both to show his own work and also to mount shows of the work of
many Colorado artists. The gallery also served as a focal point
for Denver’s local arts community, hosting weekly discussion groups and
classes. In 1984, Rigsby traveled to the Baja Peninsula and then
in 1985 to Yugoslavia. After each sojourn, Rigsby returned to
create vibrant and explosive paintings based on his experiences,
showing them at his Progreso gallery and another alternative gallery in
Denver, the Edge Gallery. The economic recession of the
mid-eighties hit the art market and Rigsby hard, however, and although
he continued to create new works of art, major exhibitions were
difficult to come by.
In 1987, Rigsby decided to leave Denver and spent six months in
Barcelona, Spain. It was an electrifying trip for him.
Rigsby wrote of that time:
“The streets alone are a visual feast, and the additions of museums
from Saarinen, Picasso and Miro to 12th century icons produced artistic
indigestion. My paintings are always about the way things look
and feel. Barcelona was a time machine extending those sensory and
emotional concerns back to the Middle Ages. I felt the need to reduce
my work to essential elements of color, scale, drawing and format. The
[resulting] color studies speak eloquently for themselves, and in doing
so, redefine all of the work I’ve done in the past 35 years of
painting.”
Rigsby completed over a hundred paintings while in Barcelona – color
studies, street portraits of the characters he encountered on a daily
basis, and a number of dark landscape paintings. He found time to
run with the bulls in Pamplona, and began writing stories about his
adventures that were later published.
Upon his return to Denver in 1988, Rigsby continued to explore the
alter egos of the color studies – he concentrated on a series of dark
paintings, all prominently featuring back. He commented about
these black paintings that he “ decided it was time to explore the
perception of the eye and physical space as defined by low –light
conditions…I find these paintings elegant, joyous and light-filled,
with no feeling of heaviness at all.” In mid-1988, Rigsby moved
permanently to Houston, Texas, where he would spend the last five years
of his life.
Once in Houston, Rigsby made a discovery that would serve as the
inspiration and material for some of the last works of his
career. In 1989, he discovered a salvage yard filled with scrap
rubber, and he began working on black rubber sculptures, as well as
paintings with rubber elements incorporated. He made strong
connections in the Houston alternative arts scene, and became a regular
contributor and art critic for a local weekly newspaper, The Public News.
From 1989 through 1992, he exhibited his sculptures and paintings at
Houston’s Brent Gallery, Fountainhead Gallery, and
Blaffer Gallery. He also produced an installation of his rubber
sculptures on the roof of the Diverse Works Gallery in Houston. 1992
also marked Rigsby’s return to Denver when he exhibited his sculptures
at the Payton-Rule Gallery in Denver, leading to an Absolut Rigsby
commission by Carillon Importers.
The 1990s were a tremendous struggle for Rigsby, with financial crises
compounded by physical trauma (he accidentally sawed off the top joint
of the index finger of his left hand while working in his
studio). Although his work was being shown, it wasn’t selling,
and the tremendous financial pressure he felt weighed heavily upon
him. He spent an increasing proportion of his time going to flea
markets and garage sales, rehabilitating and repairing the things he
bought there, and then re-selling them simply to raise enough money to
keep a roof over his head. He had little time to paint or sculpt,
the things in life that had always, no matter what the circumstances,
brought him joy.
Rigsby’s final works were a series of intricate paintings and drawings
on used books that he purchased at the flea market. Most of these
drawings, which he referred to as sculptural form drawings, were
executed on page after page of science texts, music books, and a Korean
bible and fill hundreds of pages. Additionally, Rigsby created an
exquisite book he titled 28 de los Angeles, in which his
twenty-eight simple and elegant drawings of angels resonated with the
influence of Rembrandt he had so admired in his early days. In a
sense, Rigsby’s final works, art created on used books which were the
only materials he could afford, brought his work and life full circle
from his childhood days. Rigsby’s life, though begun and ended in
adversity, was nonetheless illuminated and enriched by the irresistible
impulse he had to create art and beauty.
John David Rigsby was killed in a one-car accident in Colorado in August, 1993.
| |
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Following is a review by Michael Paglia of the artist's July 2004
retrospective at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. It was
submitted by John Rigsby, Jr., son of the artist.
There's a magnificent retrospective at Denver's Museum of Contemporary
Art devoted to the work of the late John David Rigsby, who was a major
powerhouse in Colorado's art scene. "Dots, Blobs and Angels" surveys
more than forty years' worth of the remarkable artist's paintings and
sculptures.
The year 1993 was strange, and by that I mean terrible. Many of the
city's galleries closed because of bad economic times, and then the
artists started dying. In a matter of a few months, Denver lost three
significant artists: Rigsby, experimental photographer Wes Kennedy and
figural abstract painter Edward Marecak. Interestingly, all had been
the subjects of solos within the previous two years, so they were fresh
in everyone's minds.
I bring up Kennedy and Marecak in relation to Rigsby because the fate
of their works debunks the widely held myth that once an artist dies,
interest in his or her art increases. In truth, most artists, even
those with distinguished careers and credible oeuvres, are gradually
forgotten after they pass away.
Kennedy is a good example: Other than a piece or two in a group show,
when's the last time you've seen one of his works? Marecak has fared
better because he was part of the mid-century modern scene, and there's
increasing interest in the artists of that period. Finally, there's
Rigsby, who, like Kennedy, has been slowly forgotten. Dots, Blobs and
Angels aims to rectify that -- and to a great extent, it does.
Cydney Payton, the MCA's able director, put together the show,
selecting the pieces and, as usual, supervising the installation. On
both counts, she's done a bang-up job. Her selections represent what
she sees as the pivotal pieces of Rigsby's art, and by intelligently
arranging them in chronological order (though there are some
exceptions), Payton walks the viewer through Rigsby's subtle shifts of
aesthetic theory.
Some may see the choice of Rigsby as odd. After all, as I said,
he's been dead for over a decade and has gradually faded in memory. But
maybe that's what makes it a wise call, because even if everything in
the show is old, it's essentially new to most.
"I always have a pool of Colorado artists that I'm interested in
putting together exhibitions for," Payton says. "And David Rigsby has
been in that pool." Payton met Rigsby when she was in her twenties,
getting to know him through her association with artists who were in
and out of the so-called Big Chief building on the 1500 block of Platte
Street, which was then given over to artists' studios. Among the others
associated with the place were, oddly enough, the aforementioned
Kennedy, plus Dale Chisman, Michael Pedziwiatr, Martha Daniels and the
late John Fudge. The young Payton walked right into a who's who of the
period, so to speak, and made contacts that she still maintains.
"This is my first solo exhibition at MCA for a Colorado artist," Payton
notes. "But it kind of fits in with my history of doing solo shows for
Colorado artists, and my history of investigation and putting out
exhibits about the kind of work that has been generated here." Payton
put on dozens of exhibits on Colorado subjects before joining the MCA,
presenting them at her own gallery, Cydney Payton Art Folio, and later
at the Payton-Rule Gallery and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.
"It's the perfect jewel in my curatorial crown -- if there is such a
thing as a curatorial crown," Payton says with a laugh.
Perhaps it's all this experience that makes "Dots, Blobs and Angels"
one of the best shows Payton's ever done. That, and the fact that
Rigsby was a brilliant artist who left behind stacks of paintings,
reams of drawings and a warehouse full of small sculptures. "During his
career, Rigsby's work followed the same trajectory as some of the most
significant players that we've come to associate with the last fifty
years of art -- Diebenkorn, Rauschenberg, Guston," Payton says. "Rigsby
was exploring the same ideas at the same time, and even prior, in some
cases, to these artists who have been credited with pioneering them."
It's a bold claim, but the show backs her up from the very start. One
of the first paintings in view, "Sunken Ship," a mixed media on board,
was done in 1959 and includes both abstract painted passages and found
imagery. Yes, in 1959! The painting, like the work of Rauschenberg and
Johns at that time, has one foot in abstract expressionism and the
other in the beginnings of pop art. I guess Payton is right: Rigsby
really was on the same trajectory as the most significant players of
his generation.
"Sunken Ship" hangs on the wall facing the entrance alongside a
painting by Japanese artist Tatsu Heima, who was Rigsby's mentor. The
pairing demonstrates how Rigsby took off from Heima's approach, though
it also demonstrates how what he learned from Heima would continue to
affect his ever-evolving style throughout his life.
"Ship" was painted when Rigsby lived in New York, having followed Heima
there. Heima was his teacher at the University of Alabama, which Rigsby
entered with the help of the GI Bill after serving a stint in the Army
band during the Korean War.
Rigsby was born in Alabama in 1934, the last of seven children in a
sharecropper's family. Making matters worse financially, his father
died in a car accident when Rigsby was a child. Art was surely a
diversion from his grief, but even before his father was killed, he had
an interest in being a painter. Rigsby's earliest known work is an
expressionist landscape in oil done on a book cover when he was eight
years old. It reveals a sophisticated composition, which allows it to
pass for an adult's work. (This painting is displayed in a vitrine.)
To follow the exhibit in order, visitors should turn left and take in
the wall facing the one "Sunken Ship" is on. The pieces, all works on
paper, date from the late '50s and early '60s and were done while
Rigsby was in New York. Until the early '60s, he went back and forth
between Alabama and the Big Apple. Then he got a gig as an art teacher
for the United States Information Agency in Tunisia, where he lived for
a time.
Rigsby increasingly embraced color-field abstraction during the 1960s,
incorporating vaguely geometric shapes, as illustrated by "Block
Island," from 1963, which is installed in the small gallery just beyond
the entry space. Also in this section are several surrealistic
compositions, notably "Mirabile Victu," a mixed-media piece from 1969.
This awkward, somewhat Picassoid still life predicts the look of much
of the work of the '80s, when surrealism was revived. And I'm not just
referring to Rigsby's oeuvre, but to the work of a lot of other
artists, in particular the contemporaneous work of Guston. (There's
Payton's trajectory analogy again.)
The early '70s were Rigsby's most successful period, and in 1970 he
became one of the first artists in the country to get a grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts. His paintings from this period are
hung in the two spaces behind the first of the small galleries. They
incorporate found material, including boards and appropriated images,
and seem to strike a balance between his earlier pop-inspired works and
his later color-field pieces. Not incidentally, they also take a
theoretical step away from his earlier surrealism.
Rigsby survived on the largesse of the NEA until 1976, when he came to
Colorado after having visited the year before. He first settled in
Evergreen, and his statewide reputation was quickly established after a
solo of his work was presented at the then-new Arvada Center for the
Arts and Humanities in 1977. He moved to Denver in 1980.
Colorado definitely agreed with Rigsby; he created some of his most
important pieces in the late '70s and '80s. Payton has installed this
work in the main gallery, and it includes many monumental paintings,
both on canvas and on paper. Rigsby did paintings of stripes as well as
polka dots, all of which are positively post-minimal. (Remember, Damien
Hirst famously did the same thing, a generation later.) That's right:
Rigsby was delving into post-modernism in the 1970s. Again, he was
ahead of the pack with his breakthroughs.
The galleries under the mezzanine host various series from the 1980s,
including Rigsby's outrageous cupcake paintings, in which cupcakes are
simplified into a handful of forms done in garish colors. In a
differing mood are his elegant, if somewhat depressing, "Dark
Landscapes." The sadness conveyed by these paintings perfectly
reflected Rigsby's sad life: He was alone, broke and out of prospects.
In the space at the bottom of the stairs and up on the mezzanine, the
show takes a turn, indicating a clear change in Rigsby's style, which
occurred in the last years of his life. This is mostly work done after
he moved to Houston, in desperation, in 1988. Many of these pieces are
totemic sculptures made of rubber, arranged on a continuous sculpture
stand. When I got to the top of the stairs, I caught my breath as I
took in the tremendously beautiful installation. It's absolutely
spellbinding. Also on the mezzanine are Rigsby's drawings of angels,
including an example of his "sculptural form drawings," in which he
covered the pages of secondhand books with drawings.
The book drawings recall that early childhood painting done on a found
book cover. In both instances, necessity was the mother of invention:
At the end of his life, just as at the beginning, Rigsby had no money
for art supplies, but had to make art anyway. Also harking back to his
early life was his death in a car accident -- just like his father.
Rigsby was killed in the summer of '93 while driving back to Denver to
attend his daughter's wedding.
I heartily recommend the MCA's magical "Dots, Blobs and Angel"s. That
goes for those who know about Rigsby -- and especially for those who
don't.
Source:
http://www.westword.com/
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