Born in San Francisco, California, in 1939

Ron Nagle makes small compositions of mysterious forms that invite contemplation and intense study and which defy and encompass traditional boundaries between ceramics, sculpture, and painting. Nagle is part of the Abstract Expressionist Ceramics movement led by Peter Voulkos.
Freely mixing clay with other techniques, his inspirations are as diverse as the origins of his artworks’ titles. His condensed pieces are highly evocative, evoking a range of emotional responses from sheer eroticism to visceral discomfort. Intertwining vices, the vocabularies of gluttony and lust easily mingle in describing Nagle’s dribbling bright and luscious drips of enamel, iridescent, pastel, and velvety surfaces, spilling holes, perforations, and folds. Each of his little sculpted clay objects are fragments of a small world, a miniature scene on which a small event has been captured. Every  little piece by Nagle tells a long story.