Ron Pekar: A Big Fish in a Small Pond

By Monica Tabrizi

Meeting with Ron Pekar at the Dixon Creative Center provided me a sneak peek inside his vast and varied career. Self-portraits, sketches, still life, and everyday paintings line the walls of this space. By the age of 5, Ron knew he wanted to create; he just had to convince his parents he could support himself doing what he loved. He has no preferred mode of creating, although he did admit to an affinity for Leonardo! The limitless creativity and never wanting to focus on one medium has admittedly been a fault, not a strength, when it came to critics, but he believed it made him a better teacher.

Packed and headed to Yale for an MFA, Washington University in St. Louis offered him a full scholarship, paid teaching fellowship, and housing to boot; an offer he couldn’t refuse. Teaching art for 40 years took him to many places, and he spent 20 years at the Memphis College of Art, where he and his wife raised 2 kids. He credits his success both as an artist and a teacher because he “talks a lot, loves people, and is interested in what they do.” 

Memphis allowed him sabbatical time to be a visiting artist, critic, lecturer, and teacher for places like the Pratt Institute and University of Texas. This allowed him the space to find “patrons” that funded some of his larger artistic ideas. He made a decent living by “talking people into doing works that they didn’t know they wanted, but did.” 

He chose California from Memphis, where he was “a big fish in a small pond,” in the mid-80s because it was an up-and-coming artist venue; Ron wanted to get in on the earlier side of this revolution. He had gigs at CSUN, Otis, and Pasadena School of Design, which led him to teaching “the best artists in the world” at Disney for 20 years. One of his iconic art installations is Traveler, the bronze horse sculpture on the USC campus, commissioned by then-USC president Steven Sample and his wife, Kathryn. He admits most students have climbed up and posed for pictures, despite USC strictly prohibiting this. Fun fact: he braided the tail as stepping stones so folks can hop on and become social media famous. Traveler gets wrapped in duct tape for the USC-UCLA football game to protect from mischief. 

Ron and his wife followed their kids to Long Beach and chose Belmont Heights specifically because they loved the neighborhood. He loves people who stop and chat, as this fuels his artistic drive. This connection to the community led him to the Dixon Creative Center, where he will be re-homing much of his beloved art collection in the fall.  

Stop by and meet Ron and his art at 3920 E. 4th Street, dixoncreativecenter.com. Ron will be designing an original sketch just for our BHCA community; look for it in the winter edition of the BHCA newsletter.