Ronald Gonzalez, Sculptor (3D)

A great artist lives with his wife Cindy in upstate New York, teaching at The State University Of New York at Binghamton. He grew up poor in this once-industrial town where he met with "sculpture" in the form of cheap plaster reproductions of the saints in the local Catholic Church. Awed by their brooding presence, even as a child he began constructing his own "saints" from trash he would find. Later, working as a dishwasher and lightweight boxer to earn money, never a formal student (his grades were too low), he studied with tolerant professors of the school, including myself, until (speak of miracles) he was hired to teach sculpting himself! There's no artist I admire more.