He made art.
He lived it.

The first exhibition.

At seventeen, Roland held his first solo show in San Francisco. The milestone appears in a 1991 Sierra Arts Foundation announcement, a reminder that his public life as an artist began long before the large sculptures and desert installations preserved in this archive.

Among artists.
Finding his own way.

After San Francisco, Roland became part of the Venice Beach art community. In his memoir, he recalled showing his work at the Gas House and meeting Andy Warhol, who invited him to New York. Roland chose a different path: he married Liz.

His recollections included John Altoon, an early encounter with Niki de Saint Phalle’s experimental work, and a young singer he called Buttercup, whom he remembered as Janis Joplin. These stories carry his humor and the atmosphere of a world alive with experimentation.

A new life
for old materials.

Roland settled in South Lake Tahoe in 1982. In the years that followed, his recycled-material sculptures found audiences in galleries, public spaces, and corporate collections.

In 1991, his Recyclism exhibition opened at Reno City Hall Galleries. The unveiling included original music inspired by the sculptures. A year later, Comstock Bank of Nevada commissioned three works made from mining equipment recovered from the Comstock Lode region.

The Hungry Eye.
A shared dream.

Roland and Liz moved from Lake Tahoe to Sedona in 1993 and opened The Hungry Eye Gallery of Fine Art. Liz chose the name, a play on San Francisco’s Hungry I cabaret. The gallery opened with established artists, including one of Warhol’s portraits of Mick Jagger.

The Verde Valley became home. Roland and Liz shared fifty-one years of marriage before her death in 2013.

The imagination
kept expanding.

The Feathered Serpent brought steel sculpture to a monumental scale. An archived 2016 cover records its return to Eliphante, the art village on Oak Creek in Cornville. Roland also envisioned the sculpture as the centerpiece of a film project.

His later archive documents Caduceus, work on the installation’s supporting columns, and collaborations involving Astarte, costume concepts, and performance. The photographs show the physical work behind the vision: building, mixing, lifting, and shaping.

A different kind
of statement.

Roland produced Greed Incorporated with singer, songwriter, and performer Shondra Jepperson. Completed in 2018, the music video pairs an original hard rock song with a pointed social message. It screened at the 2020 Sedona International Film Festival, with Roland and Shondra credited as producers.

The song and video earned recognition across music competitions and film festivals. It was another expression of Roland’s interest in bringing different art forms, and different people, together.