George Rickey

George Rickey (June 6, 1907–July 17, 2002) was an American kinetic sculptor.

Rickey was born on June 6, 1907 in South Bend, Indiana. When Rickey was a child, his father, an executive with Singer Sewing Machine Company, moved the family to Helensburgh, Scotland. Rickey was educated at Glenalmond College and received a degree in History from Balliol College, Oxford. 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, where among his many students was future National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy.

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). 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 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. While at Muhlenberg, J. I. Rodale commissioned Rickey to illustrate an edition of Anton Chekhov's "The Beggar and Other Tales". Rickey later moved on to Indiana University. There, he met and was inspired by the work of David Smith.

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 of Alexander Calder. 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 in Troy, NY. His kinetic sculpture known as the "Chrinitoid" was the central element of the RPI campus. Some strange difficulty with the RPI administration caused Rickey to demand thant this machine be removed in 1984. Those of us who attendend RPI remember this device vividly. This 34 foot tall windmill spun over our heads with tremendous power. www.paynecentral.com/tompayne/chrin/index.htm

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.

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 on July 17, 2002 at the age of 95.

Gallery

References

* Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, "An Annotated Inventory of Outdoor Sculpture in Washtenaw County", Master's Degree Project, 1989
* Lizzi, Maria. Archivist, George Rickey Workshop, East Chatham, NY
* New Jersey State Museum, "Sculptures by George Rickey and James Seawright", New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, 1970.
* Frank Popper "Origins and Development of Kinetic Art", Studio Vista and New York Graphic Society, 1968

External links

* [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/rickey_george.html Art Cyclopedia]
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7066749447590614628 Cluster of Four Cubes] at National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden - video 5' 6"
* [http://www.ludorff.com/ap/rickey/rickeye.html Biography & Available Works by George Rickey] Galerie Ludorff, Duesseldorf, Germany
* [http://www.rpi.edu/dept/metasite/news/magazine/winter2004/onelastthing.html "In Search of the Chrinitoid"] , an article about Rickey's work at RPI.
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