In our candy-colored digital world, there’s no time for rust. Gadgets from five years ago are worthless to a “newevery-two” culture. And a man working long hours alone in a garage is presumed to harbor grand ambitions of becoming a start-up millionaire. But on Robinson Street in Binghamton, you can pick up a distinctly analog signal. It emanates from the cramped studio of sculptor Ronald Gonzalez, a Binghamton University faculty member who transforms the detritus of the last century into burned and blackened figures that speak to the 21st century’s values, politics and ideas of beauty. Step inside, and you’ll see a workbench that will never witness the birth of a shiny, high-tech gizmo. It’s dotted with drips of wax and home to ancient coffee cans bristling with tiny paintbrushes. The jumble of not-yet-art objects stacked against the walls includes a red typewriter, bicycle seats, a deer skull, a rotary phone, broken guitars, a doll-sized bathtub and hopelessly scratched 45s. Standing guard among this trove are completed works, figures with names like “Stitch,” “Bug” and “Stir.”
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Binghamton University • BINGHAMTON RESEARCH • Winter 2014
Ronald Gonzalez
An eye for decay