LIFEWORK & BACKGROUND:

​

Ronda LaRue is an integrative artist, author and trained social scientist whose work over more than five decades has moved across applied research, organizational strategy, visual and conceptual art, consciousness and human development, writing and, more recently, lyric-driven musical works.

​

Across these forms runs a sustained inquiry into perception, identity and meaning—how memory, relationship, culture, inner life, power and imagination influence what we see, believe and become, and what may change when those forces are brought more fully into awareness and creative expression.

​

That inquiry has taken her from corporate and civic research to large-scale social-commentary installations, the Beatrice Wood portrait series, books and internationally recognized SoulArts retreat work, and the evolving interdisciplinary practice of SoulArts Studio. Rather than separate careers, these have become one continuing body of work.

​

Ronda lives and works in Ashland, Oregon.

 

EDUCATION:​

​

M.S., Applied Social Research & Evaluation Methodology
Texas Christian University, 1982

​

Graduate study in social psychology, health-behavior research, research design, evaluation methodology and strategic research. Thesis: Clinical Problem Solving in Medicine. Graduated at the top of her class.

​

B.G.S., Sociology, Psychology & Business Administration
University of Texas at Dallas, 1978

​​​​

​​​​

CONSCIOUSNESS, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT & SOULARTS

​

Ronda has devoted most of her life to an ongoing inquiry into conscious awareness, depth psychology, creativity, health and human development.

​

Her extensive postgraduate and independent study has ranged across depth psychology and symbolic process; Eastern contemplative and wisdom traditions; neuroscience and mind-body research; integrative and functional health; relationship dynamics; creative and expressive process; aging, embodiment and evolving health technologies.

​

Her training as a researcher has remained fundamental to this inquiry: careful observation, distinguishing observation from interpretation, resistance to easy explanation, and a willingness to test assumptions against experience rather than adopt a single doctrine or system.

From this lifelong work she developed the SoulArts® Process of Awakening and Couples Soul-Communication Methods.

​

Through the Center for SoulArts in Ojai, California, Ronda worked intensively with hundreds of individuals and couples through private retreats, mentoring and relationship work. People traveled from throughout the United States and internationally to work with her one-to-one. In 2007, AsiaSpa Magazine named the Center for SoulArts one of the Top 10 Spiritual Retreats in the World. Ronda later presented a five-night SoulArts intensive at Omega Institute.

​

Her books, essays, recorded programs, interviews and online writings extended this work to a much broader readership.

​​

​

CORPORATE CONSULTING | INFOVISION SYSTEMS

 

Following graduate school and early professional research positions, Ronda founded InfoVision Systems, an independent research and strategic-consulting practice she led from 1985 to 2004.

​

Her work encompassed applied social and market research, program evaluation, organizational strategy, tourism and economic-development analysis, and customer and employee research. Clients and institutional work included Panasonic Japan, The Mentor Corporation, Medical Planning Associates, Texas Christian University, Laventhol & Horwath’s Health Division, and the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa.

​

She also served as consulting Marketing Director for the Ojai Music Festival and conducted regional research and strategic work for communities including Santa Barbara, Solvang, Oxnard, Monterey and Ventura County.

​

These years established a professional research discipline and systems perspective that continued to inform Ronda’s later work in human development, art and social commentary.

​

VISUAL ART & CONCEPTUAL ART:

​​

For nearly three decades in Ojai, California, Ronda maintained an active practice encompassing ceramic sculpture and portraiture, mixed media, performance and large-scale social-commentary installation. Her work was featured through the Ojai Studio Artists Tour and exhibited in California, Texas and New York; works are held in private collections in the United States and internationally.

​

A significant early body of work grew from her relationship with legendary ceramic artist Beatrice Wood. In 1995, Contemplating Beato at The Ranch House in Ojai paired Wood’s drawings with LaRue’s ceramic portrait series of the then-centenarian artist. The series received Los Angeles Times coverage and developed from an unusually direct working process that included life-casting Wood’s face for the sculptural portraits.

​

LaRue’s later work moved increasingly into large-scale conceptual and social commentary.

​

Remote Voyeur: Outside In (1998) transformed her house and surrounding property into a site-specific multimedia environment examining media voyeurism, television saturation and domestic disconnection. Developed as a city-grant arts project, the work incorporated large exterior mural painted on her 2-story home and created with a high-school mural team, outdoor living-room settings, video monitors, sculptural “drone” figures and audience participation. The Los Angeles Times described it as one of the more distinctive and elaborate works on that year’s Ojai Studio Artists Tour.

​

The following year, Dreaming the Unveiling (1999) created an immersive millennium labyrinth through darkness, translucent passageways, white masks, mirrors and an original poetic song cycle. Visitors physically moved through the installation toward an interior space of reflection, making perception and self-confrontation part of the work itself. Los Angeles Times critic Josef Woodard singled out the installation for the strength of its conceptual thinking.

​

A later work, Altar to Human Waste-Fullness, transformed a portable toilet into an illuminated golden throne and provisional sanctuary, using image and text to turn an ordinary object of disposal into a commentary on consumption, value and what contemporary culture chooses to revere.

​

Across these works, LaRue repeatedly returned to identity, spectatorship, masking, social conditioning, power and the uneasy distance between what is publicly visible and what remains hidden.

​

Her current studio work often begins with something that will not leave her alone—a memory, contradiction, image, cultural disturbance or fragment of language—and follows it through whatever form proves capable of carrying it.

​​

​

BOOKS & PUBLISHED WRITINGS:​

​​​

Ronda is the author of three published books and numerous contemplative articles:

​

Remembering Who You Really Are: The Journey of Awakening from the Dark Night of Soul 

- A modern spiritual classic chronicling Ronda’s own passage through health crisis and her (unanticipated) transition from corporate consultant to internationally-sought mentor and spiritual teacher.

​

​

The Art of Living (is) Your Destiny: A Guidebook for the Journey of Soul 

- A practical introduction to Ronda’s unique SoulArts Process of Awakening™ as a guidebook helping readers initiate their own inner wisdom in every day real life. 

​

​

​

U-Who! A Playful Hosting Plot for More Spirited Gatherings

A deliberate change in voice, bringing humor, irreverence and psychological observation to questions of identity, self-perception, contradiction and the absurdities of being human.

 

 

Ronda has also produced several decades of essays, talks, interviews, contemplative writings and recorded programs. Her work has appeared in Spirituality+Health. Home Study Portal (online)

​

​​​​

​

HOME & CURRENT CREATIVE INTERESTS:

 

Ronda and her husband, investment adviser Matt Clements, moved to Ashland, Oregon in 2023 following several years devoted primarily to family caregiving.

​

Recent projects include lyric-driven musical works developed through socio-cultural research, portraiture, poetry, imagery, memory and emotional inquiry; the evolving SoulArts Diary Series, drawing upon journals preserved from childhood onward; and renewed examination of earlier artworks, writings and source materials.

​

Among those materials are Ronda’s extensive correspondence and process archive surrounding her work with Beatrice Wood, documentation of Remote Voyeur and the Labyrinth works, and several decades of writing and recorded material.

​

This current period is focused less on adding another discipline than on bringing the full continuity of the work into contemporary view.

​

​

SELECTED RECOGNITION & COVERAGE

 

AsiaSpa Magazine — Center for SoulArts named one of the Top 10 Spiritual Retreats in the World, 2007.

​

Omega Institute — Five-night SoulArts intensive, 2014; Omega’s teacher profile also documents the international reach of Ronda’s private retreat work.

​

Los Angeles Times — Arts coverage of Ronda’s Beatrice Wood ceramic portrait series and later conceptual installation practice with Ojai Studio Artists.

​

Spirituality+Health — Published contributor.

​

​

​

​

Ronda LaRue
Ashland, Oregon
Professional Contact: [phone] · [email]

​