"Gobstoppers" Sculpture

Chris Rodeno was born and raised in Encinitas, California. He draws inspiration for his work from his childhood and rediscovery of art later in life. As a child, Chris was inspired by his lack of depth-perception and fascination of repetitive geometric lines and abstract shapes. As many students do, Chris was captivated by doodling in notebooks and on classwork, spending many hours studying two dimensional shapes, and working primarily in graphite. His early start was squandered by childhood traumas spending years developing his eye through life experience and travel. Being born with a defect that prevented vision in his right eye, this proved to play a very influential role in both inspiring and reinvigorating his creation of art later in life. What once was shamed as a disability and defined by his aggression, now plays out as a beautiful and hopeful display of reckoning. Rodeno pulls the viewer into his two-dimensional world of color and light, forcing the observer to see both the angst and struggle alongside the vibrant future of hope. Rodeno reinvents himself while painting through a meditative state, inspired by music and innovations of texture and process. Space on each canvas displays repetition and vacancy both mirroring and muting the outside three-dimensional world, pulling the viewer into the artists reality.