In the parking lot of the Ace Hardware store is where one will find these Grumpy Cowboys. One stands tall and is nearly 14 feet in height. His partner sits atop his swaybacked cayuse, sidesaddle style, as if contemplating his predicament. The sitting cowboy is the grumpier looking of the two. The two sculptures, somewhat caricatured, stand in a log planter filled with large stones, just off the southeast corner of the Ace Hardware building.
The sculptures were the work of sculptor
Rick Rowley, a Lincoln, Montana native now working in Arizona.
While Rowley now specializes in bronze sculpture, his first commission was don in wood, using a pocket knife to created a
sculpture of his Grandfather Floyd Frisbee. In 1991 he left the business world to begin a career as a professional sculptor.
Rick Rowley Biography
Premiere artist Rick J Rowley was born in the heart of Montana and raised in a small town near the continental divide. He spent much of his youth hiking and camping in the Rocky Mountains where his love for creativity started as a young man’s dream. Rick developed an uncommon drive to excel and consequently rose rapidly to leadership in the corporate workplace in his early twenties. Yet the realm of pin stripe suits and silk ties could not satisfy the artistic urges of his expressive heart. He wanted to create without limitations.
Rick left his executive position in 1991 to establish himself as a professional artist and dedicated his life to the creation and fabrication of fine art. The wide diversity of fine art forms manifesting from Rick’s Sedona Arizona studio exemplifies his passion for creating and proves testimony of his incredible prolific nature. Add to these traits his incessant drive toward perfection and you begin to understand Rick’s mastery of many art mediums. Sculpting in bronze, exotic woods, glass, raw metal, and stone, his 3 dimensional designs range from as small as 3 inches to heroic sizes exceeding 28 feet.
As self taught artist, his signature stands only. Currently Rick spends much time teaching his unique styles of sculpture in the Orient where he is enjoying an ancient culture and learning to communicate in the native language. There he works in cooperatively with many Chinese entrepreneurs and local Officials in development of the marketing of creative arts.
“Creative thought bears no fruit unless you put forth the action to express it,” he says. “And this is especially true in the arts.” Having gained recognition at the Smithsonian Institute of Fines Arts and The White House Rick still chooses not to participate in traditional marketing concepts. Yet notably, Rick’s creations are found in private and corporate collections through out the World. Recently Rick designed as well as headed the funding concept for the installation of 6 life size human figures in Bronze, to be placed in the city park of Long Beach California. Also 4 life size Human figures in Lewistown Montana for the Veterans Memorial Park. Rick just completed a larger than life size bronze of Evel Knievel riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle. Currently Rick is working on a memorial honoring 19 Hotshot fire-fighters that lost their lives in a Yarnell/Prescott wildfire. Many fine art lovers in Europe, Japan, Australia, Asia, and South America also own fine art designs created Rick J Rowley.
From Rowley Designs