George Rickey
Encyclopedia
George Rickey was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 kinetic sculptor.

Rickey was born on June 6, 1907 in South Bend, Indiana
South Bend, Indiana
The city of South Bend is the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total of 101,168 residents; its Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 316,663...

.

Life and work

When Rickey was a child, his father, an executive with Singer Sewing Machine Company
Singer Corporation
Singer Corporation is a manufacturer of sewing machines, first established as I.M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac Merritt Singer with New York lawyer Edward Clark. Best known for its sewing machines, it was renamed Singer Manufacturing Company in 1865, then The Singer Company in 1963. It is...

, moved the family to Helensburgh
Helensburgh
Helensburgh is a town in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It lies on the north shore of the Firth of Clyde and the eastern shore of the entrance to the Gareloch....

, Scotland. Rickey was educated at Glenalmond College
Glenalmond College
Glenalmond College is a co-educational independent boarding school in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, for children aged between 12 and 18 years. It is situated on the River Almond near the village of Methven, about west of the city of Perth. The school's motto is Floreat Glenalmond...

 and received a degree in History from Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

. He spent a short time traveling Europe and studied art in Paris. He then returned to the United States and began teaching at the Groton School
Groton School
Groton School is a private, Episcopal, college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, U.S. It enrolls approximately 375 boys and girls, from the eighth through twelfth grades...

, where among his many students was future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge Bundy
McGeorge "Mac" Bundy was United States National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961 through 1966, and president of the Ford Foundation from 1966 through 1979...

.

After leaving Groton, Rickey worked at various schools throughout the country as part of the Carnegie Corporation's Visiting Artists/Artists in Residence program (partially funded by the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

). His focus was primarily on painting. While taking part in these programs, he painted portraits, taught classes, and created a set of murals at Knox College, Galesburg, IL.

In 1942, Rickey joined the United States Army, where he worked in engineering. Following his discharge, he studied art at the New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

 Institute of Fine Arts and later at the Chicago Institute of Design, funded by the G.I. Bill. He taught art at variety of colleges, including Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg College is a private liberal arts college located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is named for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.- History...

. While at Muhlenberg
Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg College is a private liberal arts college located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and is named for Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.- History...

, J. I. Rodale
Jerome Irving Rodale
Jerome Irving Rodale , was a playwright, editor, author, and founder of Rodale, Inc....

 commissioned Rickey to illustrate an edition of Anton Chekhov's
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

 The Beggar and Other Tales. Rickey later moved on to Indiana University South Bend
Indiana University South Bend
Indiana University South Bend is the third largest campus of the Indiana University system. It is popularly known as IUSB or IU South Bend. It is located in South Bend, Indiana, in St. Joseph County, Indiana.-History:...

. There, he met and was inspired by the work of David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...

.

Beginning in the early-1950s, Rickey shifted his focus from painting to sculpture and began creating kinetic sculpture. In his own work, Rickey combined his love of engineering and mechanics, Smith's graceful, yet solid, cubic forms, and the mobiles
Mobile (sculpture)
A mobile is a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. It consists of a number of rods, from which weighted objects or further rods hang. The objects hanging from the rods balance each other, so that the rods remain more or less horizontal...

 of Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

. Rickey was able to design sculptures whose metal parts moved in response to the slightest air currents. These parts were often very large, sometimes weighing tons.

In works such as Two Open Triangles Up Gyratory Rickey's two wind driven elements (geared down so that in high winds the parts are not dangerous) provide an endless series of combined, almost dance like, shapes and movements.

Most of his work was created in his studio in East Chatham, NY, where he moved after taking a position as a professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...

 in Troy, NY. His kinetic sculpture titled "Two Rectangles, Vertical Gyratory Up, Variation III" was a central element of the Rensselaer campus from 1972 until its removal in 1984. (The sculpture was universally known among students as the "Chrinitoid" after an article in a campus humor magazine parodying the long-running Reader's Digest series was titled "I am Joe's Chrinitoid" and included a drawing resembling the sculpture.) It is now located in Geneva, Switzerland, at the headquarters of UBS.

There is a smaller broken sculpture located at the NYS Department of Labor Office (Building 12). This device originally had six pointed arms connected to a spring/shock absorber system. It is missing one of the arms. The remaining five arms are still swinging in the wind. It sits in a broken fountain in front of a 9/11 memorial.

In 1985, George Rickey had a retrospective of over 100 of his sculptures in South Bend, Indiana. The pieces were installed outside (and inside) of the South Bend Art Center, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame, and at the Snite Museum of Art at Notre Dame. Accompanied by his wife, Mr. Rickey personally gave a presentation of his work at the Snite, including drawings, recalling the entire history of his life including his childhood. One of the stories he told concerned how, as a result of a WWII-era, government-administered aptitude test, he was assigned to design machine gun turrets for bombers. It was in this job that he became familiar with the high-quality ball bearings, balancing weights, riveted sheet metal, lightweight aircraft construction techniques and modern hardware (and the vendors for same) that were to become the mechanical foundation for his later forays into lightweight, delicately balanced, wind-activated kinetic sculpture. Another story concerned one his earliest memories of how, as a very small child in South Bend, he was fascinated by the window latches in his South Bend home; these latches, which can be found in many historic South Bend homes, operate conically at counter-intuitive angles that are oblique to the "apparent" design of the otherwise rectilinear form of the latch. "One expects the latch to open by pulling, but it's a conical crank, you see." This conical, oblique design shows up in many of the most emblematic of George Rickey's works, where the axes of motion are surprising given the rectilinear forms of his work.

He also lived and worked in Berlin for a short time. In his later years, he divided his time between his home in East Chatham, Santa Barbara, California and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

He died at his home in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

 on July 17, 2002 at the age of 95.

In 2010, his sculpture "Two Open Rectangles, Horizontal" that was located in situ west of the SBC (now ATT) office building in downtown Dallas was moved to a site just outside the Bob Hope Peristyle Courtyard of the Owen Art Center, which houses SMU's Meadows School of the Arts.

Honors and awards


See also

  • Indianapolis Art Center
    Indianapolis Art Center
    The Indianapolis Art Center is an art center located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The Center, founded in 1934 by the Works Project Administration during the Great Depression as the Indianapolis Art League, is located along the White River...

    who created the retrospective show "A Life in Art: Works by George Rickey"

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK