Former Syracuse University, NFL football player embraces artistic roots

Jim Ridlon first came to Syracuse University to play football, but his passion for art brought him back.

The artist and former athlete shined on the football field while pursuing a degree in sculpture at SU in the 1950s. He then returned to the university after eight seasons in the NFL to teach fine art and coach the football team’s defensive backs. He has since moved on to pursue his own art, which will show in an upcoming exhibit at the nearby Edgewood Gallery.

Growing up in Nyack, New York, Ridlon developed into both a talented artist and a promising athlete, but his journey was far from easy.

“I had the most miserable childhood in the world because I was dyslexic,” Ridlon said. “I couldn’t read or write, but I was good on the playground and I could paint.”

When he was 12, Ridlon realized his affinity for art. He said he expressed himself through crayons and paint.

He had a teacher who encouraged him to pursue art, and this drove him to become an art major studying sculpture when he started college at SU.

As a child Ridlon also knew that he wanted to play football and wanted to be a quarterback, which would require him to call out plays. He said this gave him the discipline to overcome his severe stuttering problem.

His motivation on and off the field paid off, as a football scholarship is what ultimately allowed Ridlon to come to SU in 1953 to play halfback and defensive end. He said his years at SU were the best times of his life.

He went on to play six seasons with the San Francisco 49ers and two seasons with the Dallas Cowboys before he walked away from the game.

“I think more than anything, football has taught me a lot of lessons about how to use your time, how to make the right choices about your life, and I think the key to success is that when the time comes, you make the right choice,” he said.

Ridlon decided the right choice was to leave football and return to art.

He went back to Syracuse to earn his master’s de in sculpture. While serving as part-time art faculty member, he kept football integrated in his life by also coaching SU’s defensive backs. Ridlon eventually became a full-time professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, and taught there for 35 years.

He credited football as the reason he was able to get a college education and go on to his graduate studies, but said the sport also taught him many life skills that have translated to his art career.

“I found out early to really have freedom is a discipline; you have to take freedom and structure it into something meaningful and rewarding,” Ridlon said.

These days, he is using his freedom to create unconventional artwork in his art studio just outside Cazenovia, New York.

“I work every day and don’t regret a minute of it,” he said.

He has spent the past two and a half years collecting wood to create a part of his latest exhibit, which will be displayed at the Edgewood Gallery Sept. 30 through Nov. 11.

The show, titled “Diversity,” features small collages, paintings, large constructions accompanied by poems and experimental prints, according to the gallery’s website.

Ridlon has challenged the concept of traditional art with an accompanying outdoor installation titled “Nature’s Market,” in which he said he uses the “wood anomalies” he collected to fill hundreds of baskets.

Ridlon said his goal was to emulate the marketplaces he experienced traveling through Europe, especially in France and Spain.

“I’m still inspired most by impressionist painters who were the first to break away from the first realistic paintings and start to use their sensory response to what they saw — the feeling for color and light and unusual compositions,” he said.

The outdoor installation is intended to encourage viewers to absorb themselves fully in the art using their senses, with signs even encouraging people to touch the installation. He laughed as he described how he wants people to touch, smell, even take a bite out of the art.

The installation’s theme is meaningful to Ridlon, as he feels strongly about how people fail to interact with the natural world when they are preoccupied with technology.

“I think our perception is getting more and more warped toward the computer and it’s less and less your five senses, so I hope to change that and bring people back to seeing nature again in a different light,” Ridlon said.

Cheryl Chappell, director of the Edgewood Gallery, said she has been featuring local artists like Ridlon in her gallery for 27 years.

She said she went to visit Ridlon’s studio and saw all of the natural wood he had been collecting. Ridlon told her about the installation he was envisioning, and she told him she had a huge backyard behind the gallery that could accommodate it.

“I exhibit what I believe is work of people who have a mastery of their materials and approach their work in unique and interesting ways,” she said.

She found this distinctive quality in Ridlon, and decided to exhibit his work because she was amazed by the variety of materials and mediums he utilizes, which include paint, wood constructions and collages.

Ridlon said that with his three collections inside the gallery along with the outdoor installation, altogether it will be a “confusing” combination of work for those who enter the gallery.

“It will look bizarre, like eight different artists,” Ridlon said. “But I am eight different artists.”

With many types of art, pieces are created and then the process is done with, Ridlon said. He is unsatisfied by this process. Instead, he said he likes to often start with something that is already finished and take it somewhere new.

Ridlon said he is always pushing himself to try original things and expand his artwork in different directions. He likened his artistic instincts to those of a coach, in that he doesn’t want to do the same thing over and over again. He said he wants to always put in new plays, just as he would on the football field.

Those who know Ridlon well would agree he is diverse as a person and an artist. A relative of Ridlon’s, Eamonn Dundon is a freshman public policy major at SU and has known Ridlon since he was young.

Dundon’s family has artwork of Ridlon’s in their house in Maine, and when he used to come to Syracuse he said he would always visit Ridlon’s studio in New Woodstock.

“Every time you visit he’s moved on to a new phase,” Dundon said.

Dundon said he admires how Ridlon is able to capture his essence using so many different mediums. He also spoke to how introspective and personal his work tends to be.

“It’s very reflective,” Dundon said. “I feel like he’s always reflecting back on parts of his life. Society as a whole too but definitely his story. Especially hearing him talk about his art, his story is always the first reason why he created the piece and the meaning behind the piece. It’s amazing that he’s able to tie his narrative into everything.”

It makes sense that Ridlon’s personality is so integrated into his work, as he has now devoted his life and all of his energy to his craft. And it seems like he made the right choice.

“It’s where I found myself,” Ridlon said. “Not just happiness, but fulfillment. Art has given me a reason for living.”