User:EmilyRJohnson

GEORGE RHOADS

GEORGE RHOADS (born January 27, 1926) is a contemporary American painter, sculptor, and origami master. He is best known for his whimsical audiokinetic sculptures in airports, science museums, shopping malls, children’s hospitals, and other public places throughout the world.

CHILDHOOD

George Pitney Rhoads was born in Evanston, Illinois, the oldest of four children. His father, Paul S. Rhoads, was a physician and professor of internal medicine at Northwestern Medical School. His mother, Hester Chapin Rhoads, was trained as an interior decorator, but gave up her career to raise the family. George’s artistic talent was apparent by the age of 2, when he began drawing birds and trains. From the age of 8 to 16 he attended after-school art classes where he learned figure drawing, portrait painting, sculpting, and printmaking. Though he didn’t care much for school, he read voraciously, built his own chemistry lab and darkroom in the basement, and was constantly inventing things. One of his favorite places to visit was Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry where he became infatuated with the workings of clock mechanisms. In his teenage years he collected broken clocks, which he dismantled and reconfigured to build new ones. Many of the mechanisms in his audiokinetic sculptures are based on the principles he learned as a boy about clock escapements. In 1943, at age 17, George signed up for officers’ training at the University of Wisconsin’s Army Engineering School in Madison, WI. Although he did well in his classes, he disliked military life and was relieved when a back problem resulted in his medical discharge.

EDUCATION/CAREER

When his health improved, Rhoads enrolled at the University of Chicago to study physics and mathematics. There he joined a group of musicians who stimulated his interest in harmony and musical theory, and for a time he entertained the notion of becoming a composer. He also attended classes at Chicago’s Art Institute, and much to his parents’ distress, decided after two years of academic life to move to New York City to become a painter. For two years he painted portraits and impressionistic cityscapes, but was disappointed when they did not meet with popular success.

In 1952 Rhoads went to Paris to attend art classes at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. His first solo exhibit, mostly watercolors of Paris and environs, was held at the Gallery Huit in Paris and met with moderate success. His chance meeting with American origami expert Gershon Legman kindled in him such an intense interest in the ancient art that he began inventing folds of his own. One became known as the Blintz Bird Base, now a standard origami fold for creating an animal with four legs, two ears, and a tail from a single sheet of paper. After spending some time painting in Spain, Rhoads returned to New York where he met and married his third wife, pianist Shirley Gabis. Their son Paul was born in 1956, and daughter Daisy in 1957. From 1959-1969 the family lived in New York City, spending summers in Martha’s Vineyard, where, in addition to painting, Rhoads hired out as a carpenter, taught yoga, did medical illustration, and studied astrology. He started inventing toys and sold one called “Cliff Hanger” to the Milton Bradley Company. During the 1960s Rhoads’ paintings were sold through the Terry Dintenfass and ACA galleries in New York City. At that time he was producing works in the tradition of the Renaissance masters, including trompe l’oeil and impressionistic paintings. Always searching for new ways to express his ideas, Rhoads taught himself how to weld and began constructing humorous figures made from discarded bicycles, cut-up car bodies, and other pieces of found steel. Soon he was experimenting with metal sculptures that moved and made musical sounds. The earliest ones were operated with hand cranks and turned gears that rang bells. “Homage to Ludwig” for example, was activated by a steel ball that played the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as it bounced down xylophone keys. Later Rhoads added motor-driven chains with curved prongs that carried balls to the top of the sculptures and released them to the power of gravity.

After seeing an exhibit of Rhoads’ ball machines in Greenwich Village, sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp hired him to invent devices to use in his metal fountains. Eventually Rhoads began creating fountains of his own. In a 2006 interview Rhoads said: “The main device I invented for him [Van de Bovenkamp] was the dumper mounted on a spring, which periodically dips and dumps, then returns to the upright position, or rocks back and forth. I made variations of this, like a dumper with a hammer that strikes a bell or gong, or a wand that waves. I also introduced floral forms, like a deep calyx that holds and dumps water. Later I made cams attached to water wheels that activated hammers for percussion devices; also siphons and floating balls to combine fountain and ball machine.”

In a catalog piece written for an exhibit in 1995, Rhoads describes how these early inventions led to further experimentation. “I began making sculptures using rolling balls in the early sixties. Previously, inspired by Jean Tinguely and Alexander Calder, among others, I had made some small sculptures using cranks, falling strikers, and bells. Then I had the idea of putting into motion a row of slowly rocking pendulums attached to long vertical wands, each with a different period of oscillation, allowing them to lose momentum and then reactivating them before they came to a complete stop. This might have been done with motors, each with a different speed, and timers. However, being familiar with clocks and escapements, I thought of a simpler and more elegant solution, which was to raise a steel ball about eight inches by means of a motor and a helical drive, and allow the ball to give each pendulum an exact impetus in turn as it rolled down a track, leaving the pendulum to rock freely afterwards, in a manner similar to that in which a scape wheel gives impetus to a pendulum in a mechanical clock. Watching this ball roll down its track, activating pendulums along the way, I began to think of other things a ball might do. This led to a long series of what I called audio-kinetic sculptures.”

In the early 1970s, shopping mall magnate David Bermant commissioned Rhoads to build audiokinetic sculptures for his shopping centers in Rochester, NY, and Hamden, CT, and for years afterward continued to promote and sell Rhoads’ work. 

After appearing on The David Frost Show in 1972, Rhoads was inundated with commissions for his ball machines. To gain more space, he moved to Dundee, NY, where he met Robert McGuire, a schoolteacher who created stained glass windows. Impressed by McGuire’s work, Rhoads hired him to help construct his sculptures, and so began a working relationship that lasted over thirty years. Between 1969 and 1979, Rhoads’ fountains and sculptures were exhibited in one-man shows at the Arnot Museum in Elmira, NY; the Everson Museum in Syracuse; and the Chakrian, Portnoy, and Kornblee Galleries in New York City. In 1981 he was commissioned to build what would be his largest and most complex sculpture to date for the New York/New Jersey Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC. The sculpture, named “42nd Street Ballroom,” was installed the following year in the terminal’s new north wing and is still operating today. Billiard balls are carried to the top of the sculpture by four small motors, and from that point on are powered solely by gravity as they travel in random patterns along eight major chutes. The balls play three different musical motifs from Bernstein’s “On the Town” as they plink down sets of xylophone keys.

From 1989-2007 Rhoads’ sculptures were built at Rockstream Studios in Ithaca, NY, a business owned by Bob McGuire. McGuire sold the business in 2007, and the sculptures are now fabricated at Creative Machines Inc. in Tucson, Arizona. Rhoads divides his time between Ithaca, NY, and La Quinta, CA, where he continues to paint landscapes and design sculptures.

Emily R. Johnson 2013

REFERENCES

1. Brown, Suzanne. “Machine for the Manufacture of Automatic Spontaneity Arrives at Museum.” Press release for exhibit at the Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY, 1975.

2. Case, Richard G. “Audiokinetic Exhibit Stars at Everson.” Syracuse Herald-American 8 Feb. 1976: 30.

3. Crawford, Franklin. Colossuses of Rhoads.” Ithaca Journal. 10 Nov. 1989: B12.

4. Donnelly, Kathleen. “Whole New Ball Game.” San Jose Mercury News 5 Jan. 1995: C1.

5. Gibson, Sheila. “Follow the Bouncing Ball.” Robb Report. Dec. 2000: 102-03.

6. Hall, Tony. “The Moving, Noisy Sculpture of George Rhoads.” Ithaca Times 12 July 1984: 16-18.

7. James, Rebecca. “Quantum’s Last Leap.” Syracuse Herald-American 2 Oct. 1994: 17-19.

8. Kelly, Lili. “Ball Machines Mix Gravity and Levity.” Ithaca Child. Winter 1994.

9. Kostelanetz, Richard. “Clumper Upper to Wok Dumper to chute to Helix to Block.” Smithsonian Oct.1988:

  135-45.

10. ----. “Sculpture Funhouse.” New York Times Magazine 31 May 1987: 28-31.

11. Melrod, George.

12. Meras, Phyllis. “Island Artist Creates Machines that Spin but Do Not Toil.” Vineyard Gazette 27 Mar. 1970:

13. Protter, Eric, ed. Painters on Painting. Mineola, New York: Dover Pub., Inc., 1997: 270-271.

14. Rhoads, George. Interview in museum catalog with Louise Weinberg, Asst. Curator of the Queens Museum exhibit: “George Rhoads: Audiokinetic Sculptures,” July 30-Sept. 20, 1987.

15. Schoch, Deborah. “Ping, Blip, Bong.” Ithaca Journal 20 Sept. 1983.

16. Schwartz, Wylie. “All Eyes on Rhoads.” Ithaca Times 19 Mar. 2008: 7-9.

17. Sherman, Tamar Asedo. “What Is That Strange Contraption?” Ithaca Journal 20 Sept. 1983.

18. Spring, Justin. Review of exhibit at the Ruth Siegel Gallery, New York. Art Forum April 1992:

19. Winter, Metta. “Art in Motion.” Shopping Centers Today May 1988.

20. ----. “Krazy Kinetic Kontraptions.” Christian Science Monitor 5 Feb. 1988: 21-22.

21. ----. “Mesmerizing Machines.” SKY Magazine May 1988: 28-34.

22. Zimmer, William. “Art for the Public with an element of Fun.” New York Times 22 July 1984: 22.