Dr. Ken Knowlton

Ron Resch
I have known for 40 years
as an artist and craftsman
who imagined creating things
that a normal human
doesn't even know how to think about.
Then he made them
– dozens upon dozens
of linked or faceted structures,
or extraordinary foldings from flat materials
– impossible creations which, when finished,
obviously must have required hundreds
of very small and strong, disembodied,
complexly choreographed fingers.

Fortunately,
during the construction of much of his early work
he had a film crew on call to catch work in progress
– resulting in his unusual, and superb, self-documentary
'The Ron Resch Paper and Stick Thing Film'.
Then, on to that magnum opus of art and engineering:
his monumental weather-vane-mounted
Ukrainian-inspired Easter Egg in Vegreville.
Hurry-across-Canada trains
have stopped in their tracks
for passengers to appreciate this marvel.
Only insiders know, then only partially,
of the complications and agony
sequestered and memorialized inside it.

And if another measure of a person
be his/her response to things that go wrong
– technically, artistically or personally
– then Ron has long exhibited a trait that I envy:
a chuckle that seems self-deprecating, self-accepting, and self-assuring.
I wish that all of use could, and would, develop such grace.