My son is a sophmore at RPI, and we were there for parents' weekend. He showed me the Rickey piece that he and his friends call The Tree of Death. I immediately recognized its similarity to a sculpture in front of Middlebury College's old art museum, which has hypnotized me for years. You can view it on the college's web page. I was excited to learn that Rickey taught at RPI. Did you also know that another of his works is on the wall outside the RPI library? It looks like two clock hands moving randomly with the wind. There was no attribution nearby, so I do not know the title. Everyone else viewing the piece decided it was powered by a motor inside the building. Great work in tracking down the missing RPI piece!

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I took art from Rickey about 1962 at RPI and helped him with technical details of his kinetic sculpture. His idea of free movement of his wands was sharpened cuphooks which ate themselves up, so I suggested that knife edges or roller bearings, while limiting degrees of rotation, could be used in groups to give all angles of rotation and would be much more reliable. Having tossed him my ideas, I neglected to continue to stay in contact to see how his work progressed.

Returning to RPI for the first time in 1984 for a 20th reunion, I enjoyed the Chrinitoid in front of the Greene Bldg for the first and last time. I spent most of my reunion talking up the purchase of the sculpture with Tom Phelan, my old classmate Dave Haviland and Dick Folsom. Mrs. Folsom was as ever a grand person.

The result was that the contact group I set up with new alums evaporated immediately. The other class meetings I attended just to talk up the idea gave me the idea that the alums and the institute were altogether concerned with spending money on the physical plant and the academic programs with no concern for the intellectual or creative side of humanity. I really thought Tom Phelan would have understood the idea.
Apparently the sculpture disappeared that same summer.

Many of my other interests at RPI fell on similarly bad ground and it has taken nearly fifty years for a very few of them to sprout in new windows of opportunity, quite oblivious of my early efforts.

It is good to see occasional items like your article in the magazine.

I have thought of creating a near replica of that sculpture somewhere I could enjoy seeing it, as the astonishing power of scale was so much more effective than any of the smaller Rickeys. A smaller pair of gyratory rectangular frames is installed at the Peoria Airport near here, and I try to arrive earlier than necessary for flights in order to enjoy it, though the Chrinitoid idea grates harshly in my little brain all the while.

Your pages have some broken links, and can I suggest you give a link to my Mochon page on firedragon? Rickey's writings on Mochon are quite brilliant in their clarity and insights. I have attempted to bring in other Mochon offerings to my web page from other casual collectors, and cannot understand why in this Google age this art would still be allowed to languish unseen. Although Mochon's lettering style is derivative of many architects' lettering, it is in itself so unique and full of character that I have spent some time trying to make a type face of it, with so poor results that I think it would be worth it to have it done professionally.

Sorry, no recent photos of my mug are visible on my pages, but there are some from 1967 and a really funny one from about 1976 which should entertain. They bear slight resemblance to the geezer who stares at me through the mirror as I shave.

Thanks for your thoughtfulness and compulsion in putting this out there for us needy searchers.

Karl

Karl A. Petersen

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You may be interested in the following URL:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=zurich,+ch&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=19&ll=47.370011,8.53447&spn=0.000816,0.002765&t=k&om=1

It the satellite version of a Google map of Zurich, Switzerland.

The blue canal is the Schanzengraben: the remnants of an old moat, now a pleasant sub-surface downtown promenade. Much like the San Antonio Riverwalk, without the souvenir shops and chain restaurants.

The rainbow-hued octagonal building (a photographic artifact) is an office building holding the Schanzengraben branch of UBS. Right in the middle of the shadow of the building, in the center of the image, you can make out a pale vertical "bow-tie". The Chrinitoid. You can use Google Earth to zoom in for a closer look, but they use the same image, so the resolution is no better. You can zoom out to get an idea of where the Chrinitoid is in respect to the rest of Zurich

I saw your article in the RPI alumni magazine. My work takes me to Switzerland occasionally and last June I had a free Sunday, so using the clues from your web site, I decided to find it. I walked down along the Schanzengraben from the train station because it looked like it would be a nice walk, even if I couldn't find the Chrinitoid. About halfway along, there it was. It's planted in a small brick-surrounded mound of earth in the plaza of the office building, alongside the street that crosses the bridge. There is a cafe in the building. On a non-Sunday, you could sit at one of the tables in the two rows you can see just south-west of the sculpture, with a beverage of your choice, watching it move.

I could not find any identifying information at the site. No mention of its name nor of George Rickey.

I had a camera with me in Switzerland but on the day I forgot and left it in my hotel in Bern so this is the only picture of it I have to show you.

-Mike Vosbury, '61, '68, '73

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I went back to campus and saw that there was no Chrinitoid. The Chrinitiod was a vital symbol of RPI.

We need to get it back. Its like going to DC and not seeing the Washington Memorial. Somebody screwed up bad by letting it go.

BRING BACK THE CHRINITOID!!!

Surely we can somehow organize to get it back.

John DellaMorte

RPI Class 85,86.

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