Location: #16 Located at the Center Tower on Park Center Drive.
George Rickey harnesses the wind as his partner and uses real movement in his perfectly balanced kinetic creation, Four Lines Oblique Gyratory-Square IV. This work of steel is so elegantly understated that people in a hurry may overlook it. Those who stop to observe it, however, are likely to become enchanted by its constantly changing arrangement.
George Rickey is noted around the world for his gravity and wind-driven sculptures. His works are on display in galleries worldwide.
Docent:
George Rickey - Four Lines Oblique Gyratory Square IV
Bio: (1907 -2002) South Bend, Indiana. George Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor. He studied art at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts and later at the Chicago Institute of Design, funded by the G.!. bill. Inspired by the mobiles of Alexander Calder, he began creating kinetic sculpture in the 1950s. He died in his home in Saint Paul, Minnesota on July 17, 2002.
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 hundreds of pounds. In works such as Two Open Triangles, Gyratory II 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.
The Piece: Rickey takes the wind as his partner and uses real movement in his perfectly balanced, kinetic creations. His stainless steel sculpture Four Lines Oblique Gyratory Square IV is so elegantly understated that people in a hurry may overlook it. Those who stop to observe it, however, are likely to become enchanted by its constantly changing arrangements. The piece is part of the Center Tower Collection. Rickey wrote of his sculpture, “My technology is borrowed from crafts and industry. It has more in common with clocks than with sculpture. The materials are simple: stainless-steel sheet rods, bars, silicon bronze, brass, very occasionally a little silver, lead for counterweights … Though I do not imitate nature I am aware of resemblances. If my sculptures sometimes look like plants, or clouds or waves of the sea, it is because they respond to the laws of motion and follow the same mechanical principles.”
Trivia:
- Owned a summer studio in Santa Barbara where he made abstract steel mobiles (some as large as six stories high), which moved by gravity or air; currents.
- He created some of his sculptures while serving as a sergeant in the Army Air Corps during World War II.