A Midwesterner by birth, Sterling Rathsack grew up in a military family, traveled extensively as a boy, and joined the United States Air Force at the age of eighteen. After spending seven years abroad in military service, he returned to Wisconsin, studied psychology, and pursued various related employment before completing BFA and MA degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.

For more than forty years Sterling worked in the same Superior, Wisconsin studio producing a series of narrative paintings in oil and sculptural works in various mediums. Exhibitions regionally and abroad have included comprehensive, autobiographical collections of two-dimensional work and mixed-media sculpture.

He is represented in a number of Midwestern museum collections, has paintings and sculptures in permanent collections in Japan and Sweden, and has created commissioned public sculptures for Canal Park, Duluth, MN and Gooseberry Falls State Park on Lake Superior’s north shore. Additional public artworks include murals and wood sculptures for the Minnesota DNR at Tower and a bronze memorial to Jack Briggs at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, Cloquet, Minnesota.

Sterling has taught sculpture, drawing and design at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, design at the University of Minnesota, Duluth and drawing at the College of St. Scholastica, Duluth. In 2023, after eighteen years of teaching art full time at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College he retired and continues to reside in Superior, Wisconsin.