Celebrating Art and Community: Sculptor George Rodriguez Speaks the Universal Language

This is a busy time for George Rodriguez, an internationally known maker of positively dazzling ceramic sculptures. An artist whose career was shaped in the Pacific Northwest, he’s now a professor at Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

Yet he’s coming out to Port Townsend for a long weekend anyway. 

“I’m really excited. I feel really grateful to receive this invitation,” said Rodriguez, who will be the keynote speaker at the Northwind Art Gala on August 29, outdoors at Fort Worden State Park. He’ll talk about why he loves clay and how art builds community, while guests will also enjoy a lavish picnic, a peek inside Northwind’s new ceramics studio, and other festivities under a big tent on the Northwind Art School campus. The gala is going to be one colorful experience—the decorations are giant hand-painted butterflies—and Northwind’s indispensable annual fundraiser. Tickets are still available at https://northwindart.org.  

Martha Worthley, Northwind’s executive director, is the one who invited Rodriguez to the party. 

“I met George about 15 years ago, just after he had graduated with a Master of Fine Arts [in ceramics] from the University of Washington, and I was the director of youth programming at Centrum,” Worthley recalled. When she asked him to come and teach middle-school-age students in Centrum’s camp, he agreed—even though there was no ceramics facility at Fort Worden at the time. He jumped in and taught sculpture. 

Rodriguez is an artist and an educator, yes, but above all he is a community builder. He’s from El Paso, Texas, the border city he remembers as a fluid place, just across the line from Juarez, Mexico. He earned a bachelor of fine arts at the University of Texas in El Paso, and went on to a master of fine arts at the University of Washington, where his mentors were Akio Takamori and Doug Jeck. 

Talk with Rodriguez, and you quickly learn he is a man in love with clay, with art, and with life. He has taught in rural places including Alaska, at prestigious institutions such as the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, and at Centrum. When he received the UW’s Bonderman fellowship, he traveled to 26 countries in just under 11 months. He saw the terra cotta warriors in China; immersed himself in the convergence of cultures in Istanbul, and explored Bosnia-Herzegovina, a place he had read about as a boy in El Paso. 

One of the glorious things Rodriguez has learned: Art helps people communicate with one another. This is why he makes art, after all: because he wants to have conversations with other people. 

Humor helps. Rodriguez mixes that into the clay, to invite people in. Yet his sculptures such as “Mexican American Gothic” or his self-portrait “Rodriguez with Flowers” are so richly embellished, so filled with passion, you have to catch your breath before starting a conversation. 

“Mexican American Gothic,” by the way, is part of the collection at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.  

Worthley remembers Rodriguez becoming an excellent role model—“fantastic” is the word she uses—for the young people in his “Explorations” class at Centrum in Port Townsend. Ever since then, she has followed his work, gone to his shows at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Fair and at Foster/White, the gallery that continues to represent Rodriguez in Seattle.

“I have always been moved by his vision,” she said. 

Worthley added that she has always thought Fort Worden and Northwind Art needed a ceramics facility.

After years of dreaming and planning plus months of equipment installation, the Northwind Ceramics Studio is about to open this fall in Building 308. It’s a new element of the community art school that represents a big step forward for Northwind. Along with many other courses and workshops offered in Buildings 324 and 306—jewelry, painting, sewing, even broom-making—the ceramics program will add studio memberships and classes. 

Rodriguez’ keynote talk at the gala is a kind of christening of the Ceramics Studio, Worthley said. 

For his part, Rodriguez believes more than ever in art-making as an entry point for human connection, whether we’re in Port Townsend or on some other continent. He also believes in traveling, in coming home, and in surrounding yourself with people who love art and love to talk about it.