"I draw a lot, that’s really the beginning of it all. I draw in bed, usually watching a Charlie Chan movie."

"The drawings are very small. I’ll put them on a copier and blow them up to get a general picture of what they’ll look like at a certain scale. And then I start building the models at full scale, at six inches max. I can envision things, to a degree, three-dimensionally. I’m not saying I have visions, but some little idea will come popping into my head. It might be based on something I’ve seen, and subconsciously it finds its way onto paper."

From "An Artist Who Makes Irreverent, and Pocket-Size, Sculptures/Ron Nagle helped pave the way for clay artists to be taken seriously — but he still has a sense of humor. Ahead of a new solo show, he discusses his work, his dog and his TV habits" (NYT Style Magazine). Nagle's new exhibit is called "Getting to No." The NYT describes his sculptures as "otherworldly... pastel stucco planes... glossy half-moon shapes, suggesting animal tails, chewed-up wads of gum, bare tree limbs, erect genitalia or excrement...." We're also told "he’s credited for writing iconic songs on albums by Jefferson Airplane, Sammy Hagar and Barbra Streisand."

What Jefferson Airplane song is by Ron Nagle? I looked it up. It's "Please Come Back" (on the album "Flight Log"). I couldn't find "Please Come Back" on YouTube. Sorry. Not to be confused with "Coming Back to Me" (one of the very best Jefferson Airplane songs).

Anyway, it's funny for a man of today, in the warm spotlight of a NYT style piece, to freely and unnecessarily associate himself with Charlie Chan, the 1930s/40s fictional character who is "the subject of controversy," as Wikipedia puts it: