• THE PRAGUE POST November 2001

    If Norman Ridenour were a prophet, we would have reason to be optimistic about the ultimate fate of the human race. In his show at New Town Hall, "Totems for a New Paganism," he presents a series of voluptuous anthropomorphic sculptures created-from various species of wood. On their own merit they would make for an stunning show: Their sensuous beauty and contrast of textures delight the eye, and their highly polished surfaces, like seawashed pebbles, beg to be caressed - and we are actually invited to do so.

    But there is more than meets the eye. Ridenour, a 63-year-old U.S.-born sculptor and furniture designer residing in the Czech Republic for nearly a decade, asks us to view the works in the context he has created for them: one that is both a biting commentary on contemporary society and a ray of hope that we might wise up in time to avert ecological and societal calamity.

    In an accompanying eight-page booklet, available at the entrance to the exhibition, we read that the sculptures on display are the well-preserved artefacts of a 27th-century civilisation recently discovered by archaeologists. Though it is not entirely clear what uses the totems had, the booklet and exhibit labels - which mimic the careful, speculative language of archaeology - tell us that they
    come from a society with vastly different characteristics from the ones now dominating the planet. In his texts, Ridenour presents a hopeful
    picture of humankind pulling itself back from the brink of calamity with an about-face of our entire value system.

    Ridenour's sensuous and simplified wooden forms, most ranging 60-80 centimeters (about 24-31 inches), bear the hallmarks of his envisioned civilisation of the 27th century - by which time the arts have resurged after humans became valued for-their ability to create rather than consume.

    They exemplify clean design using natural materials - minimalism coupled with the highest standards of craftsmanship. Many combine classical balance with an exquisite tension; some have the sense of being wonderfully off kilter (especially totems expressing unpredictable qualities such as audacity, caprice, curiosity or creativity). Icons representing aspects of fertility, sexuality and bounty make frequent appearances.

    Although the sculptures don't require knowledge of Ridenour's elaborate context to be appreciated - they are a pure expression of clear aesthetic values - it's all of a piece: Go. See. Touch. Think. Here is the work of an artist with a strong moral compass, one that could point us down a sensible path.

    Mimi Fronczak Rogers
    Norman Rideour. Totems for a New Paganism
    at New Town Hall
    Ends Dec. 13. Karlovo nám. 23, Prague 2-New Town, Open Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

  • The Prague Post September 18 - 24, 2002

    Unearthing the future
    Ridenour's 27th-century objects surface in Prague
    When Norman Ridenour was in the studio creating the sculptures that went into his "Totems for a New Paganism," it was amid a general atmosphere of complacency. By the time they went on view at New Town HaII last November, the admonitions about the ecological, economic and spiritual decline of contemporary civilization outlined in his art and writing project weren't so easy to shrug off.

    As he was creating the new pieces for his current show, "Reminders from the Future," nature was about to rear its head with horrendous floods in Europe and droughts in North America, and Western powers were pounding the drums of war. Thus his Cassandra like warnings seem , more eerily relevant than a year ago.

    As in last year's exhibit, the artist creates á fictive context for-a group of minimalist sculptures that are masterfuIly worked from fruit, nut and other hardwoods. Where the text to last year's show used the more careful, speculative language of archaeology,
    Ridenour has honed his text to aim more squarely at religious righteousness, economic rapacity and ecological abuse. It's a subtle shift in tone, but the urgency is palpable.

    This feeling permeates the new sculptures as well, with pieces that include Lamentation (alternately títled Rage), Grief and its mate, Solace.-It's been that kind of a year.

    Briéely suspend disbelief: These sculptures are the well-preserved artifacts of a 27th-century civilization. By this time, the entire value system of earth has radically changed: After centuries of spiritual decline and ecological mayhem, humanity has reorganized itself north and south of 35° latitude, and the tenets of the l8th century Enlightenment have prevaileád. The totems on display, the artist writes, are from the Nordic regions.

    The Sculptures ln the previous show, of which nine have been included here, were as smoothm and burnished as sea-washed pebbles. And while there are a few highly polished pieces amomn the new works; such aš Solace and Perception, most are either rough-textured or smooth but with their surfaces remaining unpolished, resulting in a heightened immediacy and intensity. Lamentation is rough-hewn from oak and birch, anthropomorphic but with a beaklike head a contrapposto weight shift, creating a hybrid of tension and repose.

    Grief is a coarse-textured figure whose elongated torso is violently cleaved as though it has cracked under the weight of prolonged sorrow. Somewhat reminiscent of the figure in The Scream by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, who was sounding alarm bells about modern civilization's excesses a century ago, it is a plangent and disturbing piece.

    As before, Ridenour presents viewers with a spark of hope. Many of the sculptures embody traits that have resurged in this 27th century - Perception and Repleteness, for example, among the new works. The forms are almost entirely female; signaIing the value placed on fertility and creativity and the renunciation of destructiveness. Would that his oracular message and ultimately, his optimism resonate among 21st century viewers.
    Atelier Trmalova Villa,Ends Sept. 26. -Mimi Fronczak Rogers

  • The Prague Post September 18 - 24, 2002

    Ridenour: High man on a totem pole
    American maverick sculpts the future,
    Early in his military career, Norman Ridenour, a l961 honor graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in engineering, was pulled off active duty in the Pacific fleet to work with Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the atomic submarine as a trainee in nuclear power plant operation. Not being a fan of atomic power Ridenour "tried to flunk out of the ~ program and got caught at it."
    The director of the program called him in and said: "Lieutenant Ridenour, you failed this examination. doesn't that bother you?"
    No," Norman replied. "It's my goal.
    The officiial waved some papers at him and said: ``Here are your written test scores in this same area from the Academy I didn't know scores went high. So I'm ordering to go back to work pass this course. Ridenour returned to class and managed to finish next to last.
    Soon he was back in the fleet, where he did three tours in Vietnamese waters. "One nice tropical morning, "when he was third senior officer of a destroyer, "North Vietnamese batteries started firing 8-inch [20-centimeter] shells at us. The captain went berserk on the bridge, so at age 27, I had a ship to save. We silenced the battery and didn't get hit."

    Eye Opening R & R
    Norman Ridenour used to like such challenges. "The three things I've wanted to do ' with my life are to teach, work with my hands and drive fast ships " Having grown up in the Bible Belt town of Warrensburg, Missouri he "came from a very conservative, patriotic, anti- communist background. So not until 1964. did I really begin to wonder why we were in Vietnam." A partial awakening came that year when; after seeing combat duty, his unit was rewarded with R&R (rest and recreation; Ridenour calls it "I&I: intercourse and intoxication in Manila:
    "In those days, the Philippines were a famed showcase for what the U:S. was doing for Southeast Asia. I came out of Manila Cathedral which had enough gold in it to sink our ship, and just outside were 40,000 people living in packing crates with their shit running down the gullies between them and just two water taps-their kids standing in line all day with buckets to get water. So if this was the model, then something didn't click."
    On a home leave that fall, he took his questions to the campaign headquarters of Sen. Barry Goldwater, the conservative guru who was running against President Lyndon B. Johnson. After a few exchanges of ideas two "very hefty fellows forcefully escorted a U.S. Navy lieutenant wearing two rows of combat ribbons out of the office." He left the navy in 1967.
    Having experienced history, he was ready to study irts meaning and implications. Enrolling as a graduate student at Duke University, he majored in modern European history, won his masters in 1969 and spent a year in Barcelona researching a doctoral dissewrtation he never completed.
    In 1972, with no jobs on the market for teaching history, but "debts and an angry ex-wife and two children to support," he quit school to work in construction: firsat in North Carolina; and then, after saving some money, in San Diego, California, as a foreman of a 25-man crew.

    Midlife career change
    From a boyhood summer job at a cabinetmaking shop, he'd carried away a feel for woodworking. This led to an order to design a large dinning-room table with a swirling koa-wood base and glass top. Then came commissions from connoisseurs of fine furniture all the way from San Diego (mostly doctors) to Beverly Hills. By the 1980s he had his own three-person studio and a reputation as an artist as well as a craftsman.
    When the San Diego Union devoted its Homes page to his work, he was quoted as saying, "Art is hammer knocking at your eyeballs." Staff writer Carol Olten noted, "Ridenour is one a handful of successful craftsmen who make highly stylized furniture bridging the gap between functional objects and art."
    Carving figures out of ebony, avocado, ironwood, walnut, cherry, ash, rosewood, oak and just about any wood that grew, he started exhibiting in 1976 in group, then two person, then one-man shows. Defining art as "a continual reseeing of everything," he enjoyed critical success and some sales. But by the late '80s, he was reseeing his own work. IN a catalogue he wrote:
    "Over the last year, I have rejected all the work I've ever done as trite and banal and rejected any claim (to be) a sculptor as vain. My early work was 'nice', sensual, well-crafted and smooth,.... Now that is not enough. I'm not sure what I'm doing now is enough either, but it is the next step."

    Norman's next step - early in 1992, just after his second marriage ended was "to sell everything, tools, books and art, kiss my l~ds goodbye and move to Europe." After exploratory foraýs into two furniture capitals - Danish-modern Copsnhagen ain Italian-Renaissance Milan - where he "discovered the world has 15 times more good furniture desigers than it needs," he accepted an offer from Education for Democracy to teach English in Trutnov, north Bohemia.
    There, at Christmas Time, one of his pupils introduced him to a holiday visitor from Prague, accountant Eva Marvanová. They met a few times the next year. When Norman moved to Brno, where ABB Energy Systems needed an expert who could teach Turbine and Boiler Technical English" among other courses, he and she became weekend commuters on Národní Express buses. In 1997 Norman moved to the capital to be nearer Eva. Two years ago they married.

    Black hole of Zizkov
    Once. he had a home base, Ridenour rented a Prague 3 basement space he calls "the black hole of Zizkov" and resumed sculpture after a decade-long layoff. But the artist's mind had not been idle even whiIe the educator's hands were full of curricula and texts. As early as 1979, San Diego Tribune art reviewer Jan Jennings had praised "a little gem, which the artist won't part with: Totem and Taboo (Indian rosewood on Elgon olive), a small, voluptuous female torso." That tiny totem, which Ridenour took with him abroad, had been fruitful and multiplied in his fertile mind.
    Last year; in Prague's New Town Hall, Nomran Ridenour unveiled a stunning one-man show: Totems for a New Paganism: 28 Sculptures From the 27th Century." In text panels on the wall, the artist explained that he'd unearthed "remains of a civilization six centuries in the future" - one that had pulled itself back from the brink of man-made extinction thanks to rationalism, liberalism, secularism and humanism.
    Viewers were invited to touch, even caress, such totems as Curiosity, Destiny, Experience, Innocence, Creativity and Earth Knowledge, not to mention a Portable Fertility Totem. The show reflected the artist's moral and aesthetic values so refreshingly that one yearned to be cryogenically frozen until the 2600s.
    Now, feeling that "the events of the past 12 months have polarised the world along quasi-religious lines." Ridenour has shown up with a sequel of a show: eight "Reminders from the Future" (including Lamentation, Defiance, Conciliation), plus nine reprises from trhe previous show.
    "Reminders" opened Sept. I2 in a landmark turn-of- the-last-century villa that is accessible by the public thrice a week. It ends Sept. 26 and should not be missed.
    Alan Levy