2024-01-17

One time that KUAF interviewed me

Ryan Rogers: scientist, artistic entrepreneur

"Ryan Rogers earned an undergraduate degree in physics and a Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry. But science doesn’t fully define him or his ideas. Ozarks at Large's Kyle Kellams sat down with Rogers to learn more about his artistic endeavors."

Listen to the interview here (11:39).

Transcript:

This is Ozarks at Large. Ryan Rogers earned an undergraduate degree in physics and his PhD in theoretical chemistry. But science doesn't fully define him or his ideas. 

He's launched novel brands in ceramics, fashion, and education. Ryan's name came up when I was talking with people at the Fayetteville Public Library about their From Maker to Market program, an entrepreneurial assistance project. The next From Maker to Market is accepting applications now at Faylib.org. We wanted to know more about how Ryan used the program to give him a boost for an entrepreneurial spirit he says he had possessed for some time. 

But it wasn't anything that I really knew how to do with for for years and years. Is that where the being part of that cohort at the Fayetteville Public Library came in? It did help a lot with taking some of the next steps. So my history is actually that, you know, just like so many little kids, I'd say I, you know, tinkered around with Legos and, you know, things like that as a kid building things.

And so I've had this fascination with having an idea in my head and then constructing it, actually being able to hold in my hand the idea that I had had in my head. But fast forward, and I did undergraduate at the University of Central Arkansas, got a four-year degree in physics. And then I came up to the University of Arkansas and got my PhD in theoretical chemistry. 

And those are much, those are really interesting fields and they allowed me to pursue some of my math interests and stuff like that. And they're much safer fields for, you know, providing income for a family. But there was always this nagging thing in the back of my head that you, you always hear people talking about, oh, I had this really cool idea for this. 

Or, yeah, I thought of this years ago. And then I saw it, you know, on the, as seen on TV or whatever, right? Oh, then I saw it in the stores in Walmart and I thought, man, I wish I had done something with my invention, you know. And so I always had that and I really didn't want that to be me. 

I didn't want to say years later, man, I had that idea that someone made millions off of that. I sure wish I'd capitalized on that idea. So after I finished grad school, I said, okay, you know what? Enough is enough. 

I've been putting off really diving into inventions and entrepreneurship for a long time. Let's take a stab at it and see where it goes. I want to ask you about a couple of the brands that you have, including Stately Ceramics, which you can kind of figure out the name. 

It's mugs that are in the shapes of states, right? That's right. Yeah. So all of my ideas, I'm trying to catalog them on trrdesigns.net, and that's my main website. 

Sometimes I call it the umbrella or the parent website because I needed some very broad, nonspecific, nondescript name like TRR Designs just for Timothy Ryan Rogers, because I had a bunch of these different ideas and all the ideas on there, Stately Ceramics, and we can talk in a second about Well-Stated Clothing. These are just ideas that I had. It's not that I set out to become the single greatest ceramicist of all time or anything like that. 

I had this idea actually while I was in graduate school. How do you make the shape of Arkansas three-dimensional? I noticed people in northwest Arkansas are crazy about the shape of the state. There's a lot of pride in that shape. 

We're from Arkansas. There it is, and it's a great, simple shape. It's just barely not a square. 

It's got some noticeable features that make it stand out, so it's easy to draw by hand but recognizable, so there's a lot of perks to the shape of Arkansas. You've seen various cool art with the state shape. I'm sure you've seen some really cool topographical maps and even coasters or something like that that just have that two-dimensional shape.

For whatever reason, I thought, how can you make it three-dimensional? What if it was something that you could hold? The crazy thing was at that time in graduate school, I was studying symmetries of molecules. H2O, you look at H2O, and it basically, what does it look like? It looks almost like a V in the simplest sense. It has a mirror plane of symmetry there. 

Lots of molecules have these properties where you spin them in a certain way, and then it looks like the same molecule all over again. It has symmetry. I was thinking about symmetry, and then I discovered how you can actually take the shape of Arkansas and essentially make it round, but the profile will still reveal the two-dimensional state shape. 

I made some cardboard cutouts, figured out, okay, this is pretty cool. I thought it was cool. Then, okay, what could you do with this? Who's going to buy this? Well, if you make it a mug, maybe you make it a coffee mug, and that's more interesting to a wider range of folks. 

Then I realized that if I can do this with Arkansas, I can apply that same method to other states. Right now, on the Stately Ceramics website, I've got Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee already available. On my own computer, I have CAD models for Texas, Vermont, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Georgia, all kinds of other states.

I would imagine, you know, especially when you go west, right? Iowa could be a good mug, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Washington. I want to see the Hawaii or the Maryland mugs. I know. 

People always say Hawaii, and I'm like, oh, come on, because, you know, it can be done. Could it be done to make anything useful? One really cool state is actually Texas. Now, just between you and me, I love the shape of Texas. 

I think it's just growing up in Arkansas in the shadow of this monster state. It's a horrible shape for any mug or something like that, it doesn't make a good mug. But in my CAD model, I'm actually planning for Texas to become like a big, decorative, floating, serving platter. 

Well, and then Stately Clothing, right? I've got that name right, right? Well, I called it Well-Stated Clothing. Well-Stated Clothing, that's right. Trying to make it something different from Stately Ceramics. 

Well-Stated is fundamental to the product. That's right. So that was a similar idea when I came to Northwest Arkansas, and I saw people have, people love the shape of the state. 

Why can't you make a pocket tee? Well, and also, I came up in 2015. And if I recall around that time, pocket tees were sort of re-emerging. I remember my grandpa wearing pocket tees, right? And you always like, grandpas would have stuff bulging out of their pockets, like half their shirt was sagging down, because they were really using this pocket. 

And, but I just remember pocket tees were coming back in, you know, there were a lot of the fraternities and sororities were starting to do these like oversized pocket tees was the thing. And I thought, this is like Arkansas makes a perfect pocket shape. It has a big, it has a big flat top that you could just make a hole, right? And no, actually, I was completely wrong. 

It's really difficult to make, to make a pocket that's not a standard shape. And so I had this idea for a long time. And it was a similar time kind of got out of grad school. 

And I finally had the personal time that I could invest in figuring out how to do this. And I don't sew anything. This is, you know, this is a project that I've collaborated with other folks on, talked to other experts to make various levels of prototypes. 

And, but it turns out it's very difficult. There's a good reason that you don't see these types of shirts everywhere, because most pockets are made all on one machine. So your standard pocket shapes, and like say the, imagine even the back of your blue jean pockets, that entire pocket is sewn on one single machine.

Whereas when you want to do a unique shape, and if you just on wellstatedclothing.com, just in the very home page, the background is a set of models wearing all different kinds of shapes of all different state shirts. And to get those shapes, you have to sew them by hand. So I mean, you can, you can use, you can use a machine to do parts of it, but you're, you're going to have to put in a lot of elbow grease as opposed to the traditional pocket shapes. 

So yeah, that's why, that's why it hasn't been done. And that's why it's difficult. And that's what makes it unique is that good luck finding someone else who's, who's going to make such an intricate shape.

You and I have talked about brands that are artistic, fashion, three-dimensional art, ceramics, your degrees, chemistry, physics. That's right. But I'm betting that you would say this all works together. 

This all kind of makes sense. The common thread in these different projects is the joy that I take in taking an idea, and let's give them the golden phrase, from maker to market. Seeing an idea, and then I go in a store, I know that I had this idea a year ago, and then my wife and I walk in a store and we see their stately ceramics on the shelf, you know, and I'm still elbowing her going, that's me, that's me, I did that. 

And she said, I know, I know. But it's really cool. The other thing is that these projects give me an outlet to do some of the things that aren't so degree centered. 

You know, I do have this brand called Ensemble Interactives, where I have designed and published some peer reviewed work on science teaching techniques, and some tools that help teaching, primarily high school and college age, some very difficult topics. And that's much closer related to my graduate work, where I am taking the understanding that I gained in grad school and now trying to apply it down to younger audiences. And that, so that's maybe more what you might expect. 

Stately ceramics, well stated clothing, these other things are giving you a glimpse of somebody who's not just a degree, you know. We all have so many more ideas other than just what people typically think of as our day job. And so this is how I get those ideas out there. 

Ryan Rogers spoke with me last week. You can find out more about him and find links to his brands like Stately Ceramics and Well Stated Clothing at trrdesigns.net. And you can find out more about the From Maker to Market program at the Fayetteville Public Library by searching for it at faylib.org. This is Ozarks at Large.

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