What Do People Like About George Rhoads?
And why do his works make good public art?
I had the pleasure of introducing my daughter to one of George Rhoads’ sculptures a few years ago, a large two-story one in Ithaca, where his studio was located later in life. She’s more of a hands-on learner and tends to like things she can touch and do, just looking at something doesn’t tend to hold her attention. But it’s very approachable for someone like her.
Rhoads died in July 2021, and it took him a long time to come into his own as an artist. He started out as a painter and had some success, but his ball sculptures are what he will be remembered for.
Lots of people would look at them and think of Rube Goldberg machines, but they are not, because a Rube Goldberg machine involves the transfer of kinetic energy between different pieces. They are often called kinetic sculptures, but I think it would be fine to call them ball courses.
The easiest one to see is at the 42nd Street Port Authority Terminal in New York City, which is red:
Rhoads was a skilled practitioner of origami, though he gave it up later in life (his buffalo fold is very cool), and you can see a bit of the Japanese sensibility in the way some of the courses incorporate uncertainty or randomness. He loves devices that either delay the ball—like the square baskets that shake—or create uncertainty about which direction it’s going to go.
These courses were very popular for a long time, they’re all over New England. When shopping centers were more fancy than they tend to be today, people bought Rhoads sculptures for them.
The one at Logan Airport is one of my favorites, the sound and rhythm of it is very soothing. There’s a high degree of static visual interest and complexity, which pulls you in, and the motion and sound is mostly very smooth:
It’s the sort of piece you kind of wish you could take in somewhere that’s more quiet than an airport. This one is more auditory than many of Rhoades’ other sculptures, with the chimes and the xylophones. The ambient noise is probably a good thing for how one experiences it, though, because one thing you notice with how his sculptures sound is, they rattle a lot, with little pieces of metal clicking on each other, balls dropping into baskets, and the sound of the ball on the track. That becomes flattened with the ambient background noise, and what you might call the melody can be heard in the foreground.
We’re having a conversation about public art and architecture today, and George Rhoads is a good artist to think about. A lot of people who are entering this conversation have strong opinions about style. One thing people like about Rhoads’ sculptures is the way they create a sense of whimsy or surprise out of something that looks very industrial, almost like the inside of a factory.
Many of them are located in places where one goes for an experience, expecting to be mentally engaged. But for the ones that are in public, one must make a conscious decision to stop and think about these complex bundles of metal rods.
When Rhoads died, if you read tributes to him, what people remember about his sculptures is the way they brought levity to either mundane or sad moments in people’s lives. Why?
If you think about a guy going to work, arriving at the bus terminal, and he stops and looks and looks at 42nd Street Ballroom, the name of Rhoads’ sculpture there. He has to think a little bit about it, it’s complex, so it takes his mind off his cares for a minute, but more than that, if his mind arrives at the question of intentions, what this could have been put here for, he realizes it’s already accomplished its purpose.