In Memoriam: Richard Acton, dedicated member, award-winning artist

River City Art Association is saddened by the loss of our friend and fellow artist Richard Acton on Oct. 6. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Edith, and their family.

In his memory, we pay tribute to Richard with photos of his wall art created with clay, mixed media (wood and wire), and electro-pyrography, as well as examples of his dedication to and support of RCAA.

He is remembered as a soft spoken, hard working man with a big heart bursting with an eagerness to lend a helping hand — building Christmas in the Park shelter displays, working on RCAA’s mural at Community Theatre of Terre Haute and setting up RCAA’s annual juried art exhibits.

In August 2023, Richard received a 2nd Place for “Work With Squares” in RCAA’s annual juried art exhibit. “Evening Sunset” is another unique wall hanging that earned him 2nd Place honors in August 2022.

Both are examples of electro-pyrography, also known as fractal wood burning, a dangerous decorative technique that uses high-voltage electricity to burn intricate, branching patterns into wood. The process creates unique, unpredictable designs known as Lichtenberg figures, which resemble lightning strikes or ferns. Our resourceful Richard, fabricated his own tools to create these designs.

In April 2022, Richard was RCAA’s featured artist of the month in the lobby at the Vigo County Public Library in downtown Terre Haute.

This artist statement accompanied his library display of “Country Cottage” and other clay and mixed media designs:

Richard earned his Master of Science degree from Indiana State University in Industrial Arts Education, and taught at local high schools plus worked as maintenance supervisor at a local factory for the majority of his working years. During that time he was married and had three children; a son and two daughters. Although his busy life left very little time for artwork he soon developed a curiosity for creating clay works. He attended several classes to learn how to manipulate clay into interesting art pieces. Classes were in North Carolina at John Campbell’s Art School, Indiana State University’s clay classes, and Vigo County Clay Classes to name a few of the efforts used to learn about his chosen medium.

The ability to create, imagine, visualize, improvise and manipulate a medium is what describes a person that can be called an artist. It does not always depend on the medium but the artist’s ability to turn it into a pleasing piece of artwork. After several learning years that is what Richard is able to do with his clay works. Not wanting to use the clay to make the typical pots and bowls he developed an unusual way to make new pieces from clay. The clay is used as a background for pictures of different things in our surroundings. There are pictures of tiny houses, lighthouses, leaves, rabbits, birds, etc. and all of them with the medium of clay.