Rick Araluce

 
The Story Empty rooms. Barren chambers. Ill-lit crawl spaces. Places where the dust settles, the paint peels, the plaster falls from the lath to scatter upon aged floor boards. Places where something has happened. Or where nothing has happened for years. There are stories here. If you look, if you listen, you will hear them. The chair, the window, the door, the light bulb--the very walls themselves--have a tale to tell. Some of these tales are subtle and mysterious, weighted with nostalgia. Others are strange and inscrutable. Some tell of violence, collapse, obsession. Still others speak of sadness and isolation. The clock tells of minutes and hours lost, the light bulb of a presence vanished, or near to flickering out. The door might hint of a passing or be freighted with the imminence of an arrival. The window both reveals and obscures. Someone once sat in that chair, surely. Who? How many footfalls have the floor boards endured? What voices or sounds might have come through the speaker of that phone, and how far might they have travelled through the wires to echo in that empty room? Riddles. Mysteries. Stories. The dust falls. The paint peels. The light bulb has flared out. The hands of the clock have stopped. The only sound is of your breath. The Artist I’ve been drawing, painting, and making things since before I can remember. As a kid I drew everything I was interested in. I was interested in a lot of things. Dinosaurs, geology, anatomy, WW II tanks and aircraft, science fiction spacecraft--on and on. My first studio was a piece of plywood on the floor of my bedroom, a dim goose neck lamp the light source. Along with drawing, I also liked building plastic models. I entered model making competitions and won. I never received an award for my art. I also never truly went to art school. Just a few years in a community college in Southern California, where I grew up. I didn’t think I needed to be taught to be an artist since I already was one. I haven’t always been creating miniatures. For the first part of my calling I was a painter, wanted for a time to be an illustrator. I’ve done book jackets and record covers. Even had a few paintings featured in a Hellraiser movie. The one that takes place in NYC. Add to that several music videos I was brought in on to create miniature sets and props for stop motion animated characters. You might know the director, Fred Stuhr, for his now famous videos for the band Tool. Now I work as a scenic artist for the Seattle Opera, where I’ve been for over a decade. In my late 20s and early 30s I moved on to paintings that contained three-dimensional objects, as well as collage. Eventually I started putting things into boxes, and painting started to fall by the wayside. For what I really love to do is to build, to fabricate, to make things. I’m best known for my work in the miniature realm. But I’m steadily moving on to more ambitious fare--installation works, pieces that have sound, video, and mechanical components. Many of these will be minute and some full scale. As these come to pass, I’ll surely keep you in the loop. Email me at: rick_araluce@yahoo.com Inquire on availability of works: www.okharris.com or: www.travergallery.com mailto:rick_araluce@yahoo.comhttp://www.okharris.comhttp://www.travergallery.comshapeimage_3_link_0shapeimage_3_link_1shapeimage_3_link_2

Welcome. The items above will guide you to images of my works.