RON DALE
Emeritus Faculty
Ceramics

MFA, Louisiana State University
BFA, Goddard College
email: ardale@olemiss.edu

His painted wood and ceramic sculptures challenge our assumptions about space and truth as reality and idea. With each sculpture, he creates a spatial environment in which there is interaction between the viewer and two- and three-dimensional images. His active exhibition record includes exhibits at the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Works Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Birmingham Museum of Fine Arts, Birmingham, Alabama; Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida; The Gallery, Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, Florida; Palazzo Vagnotti, Cortona, Italy; NEA/SAF Traveling Exhibition (Two years); The Brentwood Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri; Carol Robinson Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Sybaris Gallery, Royal Oak, MI; Albertson-Peterson Gallery, Winter Park, FL; and Schneider-Bluhm-Loeb, Chicago, Illinois. In addition to his many exhibits, he has received national recognition for his catalog on George Ohr, the famed Biloxi potter from the turn of the century.

On the faculty since 1980, Ron Dale also served as an Adjunct Professor with the Georgia Studies Aboard program in Cortona, Italy, and has twice been Visiting Instructor at the Penland School in North Carolina. He was recognized in 1985 by the National Endowment for the Arts as the "Southern Arts Federation Emerging Visual Artist" and was awarded the 1992 Visual Arts Award of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. He was featured in an article and on the cover of Ceramic Monthly, June/July/August, 1994, and again in the June/July/August, 2002, issue with an article titled “My Heart's in the Highlands, Recent Work by Ron Dale.”

Ron Dale was awarded a The University of Mississippi's 2002 Elsie M. Hood Outstanding Teacher of the Year. His recognition came during the 59th campus Honors Convocation.

“In every student's life, there is at least one teacher who redefines what it means to learn - a teacher who makes us work longer and think more deeply - a teacher who stands firm in his beliefs, whose own excitement about his vocation reinforces the very material he presents to his students,” said Chancellor Robert C. Khayat as he introduced the winner.

Dale, who taught in the Department of Art since from 1980 until 2005, was selected from among the Universitiy's 505 full-time faculty for the prestigious teaching award, which includes a $5,000 stipend.

“The ability to motivate artistic talent is a rare trait, and the term 'art teacher' denotes a very special category of teaching,” Khayat said. “Art is the oldest form of symbolic communication in the history of the human race.

“Art transcends language barriers and cultural differences and connects us with the past and future generations. Art inspires us to think, to question, to admire and has always been the vanguard for social and intellectual change.”