Cynthia Rigden, Cowgirl-Artist

Cynthia Rigden Cowgirl-Artist At Home on the Range

The clouds were little cottony wisps in the sky, the sunflowers nodded along the side of the road, and the Weaver Mountains formed a purple backdrop on the horizon.

"Just follow the highway 'til you pass the second cattle guard, then turn right at the next road," Cynthia Rigden had said on the phone, with the sound of someone who has given directions according to cattle guards rather than street signs all her life.

Driving along the road that wound its way slowly to the Rigden Ranch in Skull Valley, I could understand why an artist might choose to live and work in Yavapai County. Remote as the area near the ranch might sometimes seem, life is peaceful and settled in a way it never quite can be in the center of a city. And for Cynthia Rigden, whose sculpted bronze animals can be found in private art collections throughout the United States, Skull Valley is even more.

"I've always wanted to draw horses and cattle and things," she told me as she sat in her studio, a crowded little room a few yards away from the ranch house proper. "I have the models to work from right here, the things I see and understand the best."

Inside the studio, the evidence of Ms. Rigden's universal interest in art was apparent. Things were everywhere: books on art, history and soldiers, a collection of brass harness ornaments and sketches, drawings and models of horses. Her latest bronze, a Greek horse right out of the Parthenon, stood on her work table.

Near the window, a Bunsen burner was ready for work. Wax was splattered all around, and a box of dentist's tools, AHM 38 used for detail work on sculptures, was nearby.

On shelves around the room, small acrylic and aluminum figures stood fighting battles Joan of Arc, George Washington, Genghis Khan, Napoleon. Over a 10-year period, Ms. Rigden has been stealing moments for this hobby, creating the small statuettes that depict historic scenes from Egyptian times through modern days. The 3-inch figures ride or kneel by their horses (or camels) and wear colorful dress. They are not for sale.

"I get rather attached to them," Ms. Rigden explained. "It takes so much time to make them and then get them all painted up."

Like the larger bronzes she creates, the tiny figures are alive with action.

She leafed quickly through a portfolio of her sketches of horses, occasionally pulling out one she liked, and continued, "I've been drawing from the time I was two-years old; I've always wanted to be an artist."

Had it not been for a chance enrollment in a course at Arizona State University, Ms. Rigden might have stayed exclusively with drawing, she said, explaining, "I signed up late for courses because I was towards the end of the alphabet, and all the basic courses were filled. Someone said, 'Oh, take sculpture; it never fills.'"

For Ms. Rigden, it was a happy accident: "It was the thing I was trying to find. I've been doing it ever since."

Dressed in the clothes she finds most comfortable, jeans and a Western shirt, Ms. Rigden looked for all the world like text continued on page 43 Herding horses on the ranch in Skull Valley. A thirdgeneration rancher, Ms. Rigden was brought up on a horse and today runs the 12-square-mile spread near Prescott. Alan Benoit Take Flight, bronze, 8 by 12 inches, an edition of 12 pieces.

Alonghorn bull, far left, whose ancestors helped create the cattle business in the Southwest, grazes on the Rigden Ranch. Ms. Rigden is experimenting with a crossbreeding program she hopes will develop "the finest longhorn calf anywhere."

(Left) Sketching in her own corral, a favorite place to work. "I get my ideas watching a horse move," says Ms. Rigden. "And I have the models to work from right here on the ranch." Alan Benoit (Left, below) April Morning, bronze, 4 inches in height, an edition of 15 pieces. (Below) The final details of a work are important to the artist. Here, at the Cowboy Casting Company in Prescott, she helps in the final assembly of one of her recently completed bronzes. Alan Benoit Cowgirl Artist from page 38 the cowgirl she is the second generation Skull Valley girl who was brought up on a horse, runs the 12-square-mile family ranch, and is experimenting with the development of a crossbreeding program that she hopes will result in the finest longhorn calf anywhere.

She has deep roots in Skull Valley. She lives with her parents in the family house where her father was born. Her uncle, Representative John Hays, was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives by voters in the area. As a child, she attended a one-room school in nearby Kirkland.

After Prescott High, she enrolled at ASU, later spending a summer session in Florence, Italy, before returning to what has always, really, been home.

Today, when there's ranch work to be done, Ms. Rigden combines a long morning on the range with an afternoon and evening in her studio. She's as likely to be found helping the farrier in the barn as working with the dripping wax figures that will become bronzes. And she considers both kinds of work equally inspiring.

"It helps to get out and see things fresh," she said. "This way I don't have to rely on memory. I get my ideas watching a horse move, get an idea of a wild scene as it happens."

And if she runs into that mental wall known as an artist's block, when she's in the middle of sculpting, the models are never far away.

"I was working on a sculpture of my horse, Majestic Annie, and having some trouble with the muscles, so I just packed everything out to the corral," she said, laughing.

Of her life as both manager of a herd of some 200 cattle and a professional artist, Ms. Rigden said, simply, "I like both, and I am lucky to be able to do both."

It's no wonder that Cynthia Rigden is most generally thought of as a "cowgirl" artist, and the powerful, active bronzes she shows at Troy's Gallery in Scottsdale, Wickenburg Gallery, and Cobweb Hall in Prescott are considered widely to be Western art.

"The West is where I live and work, and I occasionally do a Western sculpture, but I'm more interested in the worldwide scope; horses are everywhere," she said as she fingered a tan-gible Idea," a rough wax model that will be reworked in detail and cast in bronze.

In a day when some artists have learned that mass production means more bucks and the quicker you turn them out, the more dollars in the cash register, Ms. Rigden is a stubborn throwback to older times.

In the process of casting bronze sculptures, there is a stage when the original wax figure has been molded into a rubber form and a second wax is pulled from that form. It is from the second figure, she explained, that the ceramic shell for the bronze casting is made. Many artists leave the final touch-up work on the second wax to others, preferring to concentrate on creating new works rather than spending the energy on such a time-consuming task.

The animals she creates through this painstaking process laugh, smile, and show anger.

"I guess I understand animals so much I identify with the emotions they express," Ms. Rigden said. "If I were doing people, it would be the same thing I'd be trying to show their feelings, trying to show more than the cold facts of things."

Impatient with artists who create Western "wreck scenes" in which horses writhe in impossible positions and bulls stand in a way no bull ever could, Ms. Rigden strives constantly for reality: "I want to show action in my work, but I also like to do subtle, quiet scenes to show the life and action in that."

Her own favorite work, she said, "is usually the one I am working on," and she is "not totally satisfied" with any bronze she has ever created.

Her ultimate goal? "To do a perfect work." And she smiled, knowing her own standards of criticism will keep that goal constantly just a little beyond her reach.