Rick Terry

I became interested in Bronze sculpture while visiting galleries in Jackson Hole Wyoming. It was back in the mid 1970’s (I was very young), a time when my work was in ceramic clay and fired at a local pottery shop. I brought up the subject of bronze to the owners of the shop and expressed my excitement at the creative possibilities I had seen in Jackson, they knew of and recommended an art program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Being financially challenged, I would spend several years working in the oil fields of Montana and Wyoming before I could attend. Having become addicted to the money I was earning as a roughneck it was hard to give it up and go to school. Besides working in the oil fields, I had been riding bulls and bareback horses at rodeos. It took an injury I received from a horse at a rodeo in Butte, to get me to go back to school. Not being able to work I had decided to recuperate in Flagstaff. While attending my second semester of art classes at Northern Arizona University, a job at a Sedona art foundry became possible.   I took the job and became a foundry man which became my passion.

In 1986, I won a commission for the city of Prescott, Arizona a life size Rodeo bronze. This is when I left the foundry to attempt becoming a full-time artist. It was after the completion of the Prescott Rodeo project that I caught the attention of renowned Disney artist Blaine Gibson, who was somewhat retired and living in Sedona. Blaine and I were acquainted from the foundry where I had worked on some of his sculpture.   Blaine asked if I would assist him on a project that he was involved with, I excitedly accepted his offer and together we created and completed not just one, but four monumental sculptures. It was on Blaine’s recommendation to Disney that I was able to work for many years on sculptures for Disney’s theme parks.

My wife, Lynn and I live in Montana and have a Hereford cattle Ranch.  I am  currently producing Bronze sculptures which are “interpretations” of historical and western themes.