July Issue 2002
Artworks Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC, Features Sculpture by Ben Rouzie
Artworks Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC, is presenting a one-person retrospective exhibit of sculpture by Artworks founding member Ben Rouzie from July 2 - Aug. 3.
A master of satire in wood, Ben Rouzie is showing work done from 1965 through 2002. He has 20 works, including Lonesome Dove from 1965, Who Sitteth on the Left Hand of Whom, an outdoor sculpture of pine and bronze, Censorship in a Strange Land, and 9/11 made in 2001. Some of the titles are lively satires in themselves and very descriptive. In a 1994 newspaper article, Jo Woestendiek called him "mischievous, outrageous, irreverent, even profane", adding that "Mr. Rouzie carves, chisels and gouges out his views on people, politics, religion, and the world at large. His message may be as subtle as a whisper or as blatant as a scream."
Ben Rouzie makes sculpture by cutting away to reveal the image. He is a woodcarver, as his license plate "wdcarver" attests. He carves with love and precision, using many different kinds of wood including mahogany, cherry; walnut, larch, and pine. He's a perfectionist who savors what the wood brings to his sculpture.
Most of the sculpture is borrowed from collectors of Rouzie's work.
Ben Rouzie began his art career doing watercolors. In 1944 while still in the Air Force, he used his spare time painting landscapes he sold in Chicago bars for about $10. After the war, he went to The University of NC at Chapel Hill on the GI bill, met and married Mimi, and received a Masters of Regional Planning degree. When he moved to New Orleans, he found a real source for wood: "an old guy" who was cutting mahogany into lumber. Rouzie bought the leftover chunks cheaply and continued being a "closet sculptor."
Rouzie's only formal training was in elective painting classes at UNC-Chapel Hill, one of which was the first Life Class at a southern university that used a nude model. His professional art training was concerned with the observation of sculpture and working sculptors in their studios. While still in the Air Force, he hung out with John Rood, a sculptor in Madison, WI. At that time, as well as later, he looked at a lot of art in museums "intensely", as his wife Mimi puts it. Perhaps also relevant to the subject matter of Rouzie's sculpture were his career changes. He was a newspaper reporter before he became a city planner; both are jobs that call for paying attention to human behavior.
Ben and Mimi Rouzie moved to Winston-Salem with their three sons in 1956 when he became the City County Planning Director. But it wasn't until the 70's when he retired from the Planning Board after 16 years that he could devote full time to sculpture. In the summers of 1974, '75, and '76 he was teaching woodcarving as an "Artist in Residence" at Council Grove, a craft school in Missoula, Montana.
For more information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings or call the gallery at 336/723-5890.
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
427, Bonneau, SC 29431
Telephone, Answering Machine and FAX: 843/825-3408
E-Mail: carolinart@aol.com
Subscriptions are available for $18 a year.
Carolina Arts
is published monthly by Shoestring
Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2002 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2002 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.