Rona Pondick

Rona Pondick (b. 1952, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in New York, NY.

Building on the formal vocabulary of her earlier work, Pondick began experimenting with acrylic, resin, and rich color a decade ago. Using the language of the body in her sculptures, both literally and metaphorically, she is interested in the idea of transformation and the elasticity of meaning, while being captivated by the materiality of sculpture. Seeking cutting-edge technologies while maintaining sculpture as a hands-on process, her work explores ideas based on natural phenomena such as metamorphosis and mutation.

Concurrent with the transformative times in which we live, and after decades of working on a large scale, often for the outdoors, Pondick finally gave in to a long-held desire to create smaller, more personal sculptures. Continuing with her signature sculptural component, she incorporates the cast of her head (or rather, a scaled-down version of it) into small-scale polychromatic sculptures. Pondick's works have always been personal and self-referential. Yet they are so powerfully emotional because they speak to our common hopes, desires, tribulations, and even pain.

Since 1984, she has had over 48 solo exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world, including the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna, Italy; Groninger Museum, Groningen, The Netherlands; Rupertinum Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Salzburg, Austria; Cincinnati Art Museum; Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others.

 

Pondick studied at the Yale University School of Art and received her MFA in 1977. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award, Anonymous Was A Woman, Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Kulturreferat der Stadt Salzburg, Kunstlerhaus, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Mid-Atlantic Arts Grant, and others.