Terry Rodriguez, local artist, was Auburn University's first nude model.
Rodriguez transferred from Florence State College to Auburn University in 1966 for Auburn's art school to major in visual design. She first began modeling for Agnes Taugner's drawing class wearing a bikini. A visit to the class by a fellow art student, however, inspired Rodriguez to bare it all.
"A friend of Agnes's, an MFA student from Florida, visited the class and showed us her figure drawings which were done from a nude model," Rodriguez said. "Looking at those drawings, I could see the importance of being able to study the human form without the impediment of clothing."
After the visit, Rodriguez immediately volunteered to model nude for art classes.
"They were, after all, already used to seeing me practically naked," she said. She believes she was paid around $1.60 per hour.
"I would say that in very short order, no one thought anything of it," Rodriguez said.
She said she was nervous the first day of modeling, but that the anxiety passed quickly.
"Just about everybody in the room was at ease about it," Rodriguez said. "Maybe we finally felt like real art students."
Rodriguez did, however, recall bumping into one student from her class while walking down College Street.
"He turned beet red," she said. "He was a somewhat shy fellow, but after that he was fine."
After her initial debut, Rodriguez said other students began modeling nude as well, though it seemed to be mostly female students.
"Interestingly, it was very difficult to get male students to model nude," Rodriguez said. "I can only think of one who did, and he was a graduate student."
Rodriguez continued to model nude until she graduated in 1969. She was married in the spring of that year, and became pregnant that summer.
"So, in fall and winter, I was a nude pregnant model," Rodriguez said.
After she graduated from Auburn University, Rodriguez worked as a designer and illustrator for Alabama Public Television until her daughter was born.
Though it now lacks the adversity of Rodriguez's time, nude modeling is still something both professors and students in the Auburn University Art Department feel strongly about.
"To us it's medical," said Barry Fleming, interim head of the art department. "It's common and universal. People have been drawing nude for hundreds of years."
Fleming said the students who choose to model nude are treated with respect, and that atmosphere of the classes is not anything close to being lewd or sexual. Instead, it feels more like a professional place of work and study.
"It's serious and professional," Fleming said. "It's one of the best ways to draw, because the body is so complex."
"It's not awkward because as an artist, your perspective on the person in front of you changes," said Kelsey Syx, sophomore in art. "You're not looking at the model as a sex object just because he or she is naked in front of you. You're looking at a nude figure with lines and shapes."
Syx plans to take a figure drawing class in the spring.
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