Earth, Water, Sky

Ruth Duckworth (1919–2009)

Earth, Water, Sky Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009)

Commissioned 1965
Installed 1967–68

Ceramic mural
400 square feet, covering four walls and the ceiling

Located in the entrance to the Henry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences
5734 S. Ellis Avenue

Commissioned in the name of the University of Chicago by Julian Goldsmith, Chairman of the Geophysical Sciences Department; Presented to the University in honor of Jane H. Sherr by the Leonard J. Horwich Family

Earth, Water, Sky, a ceramic mural featuring abstracted weather patterns, rock formations, and topographical views, lines the entryway to the Henry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences. This 10’ x 10’ x 10’ space is covered in over 400 tiles with fluid, biomorphic ceramic shapes that would characterize Ruth Duckworth’s long subsequent career as a sculptor. Duckworth joined the faculty at Midway Studios in 1964 and within a year she secured the commission for the mural from Julian Goldsmith, chairman of the Geophysical Sciences department. The mural would be for the department’s new home in a building designed by I.W. Colburn. In 1966 Goldsmith wrote a letter to alumni about the then–incomplete project:

As one walks into the building, he will pass through its essence. […] I think it will be stunning, for not only do I consider Mrs. Duckworth to be one of the world’s leading art–ceramists, but she has spent a great deal of time prowling in our library and looking at rocks, minerals, landscapes, waves and weather, on our behalf.

Duckworth, who did indeed study weather satellite images and topographical maps, planned the mural with Colburn and both mural and building were completed in 1969. The final mural features glass-filled craters, white cylindrical tubes encasing lights on the ceiling, swirling “fin-like” wedges, and the large cinder cone shape of Mt. Fuji composed of concentric circles.

Earth, Water, Sky was Duckworth’s first large commission and would ultimately convince her to stay in Chicago, where she remained until her death in 2009. The mural also led to two other large mural commissions in the Chicago area, Clouds Over Lake Michigan in German Dresdner Bank (1976) and The Creation in Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Hammond, Indiana (1984).

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Earth, Water, Sky marks a turning point in Duckworth’s idiosyncratic career. She started learning ceramics after a decade of working as a stone carver, which contributed to her interest in a freeform aesthetic as opposed to utilitarian dishware. But it wasn’t until her move from London to Chicago and the commission from Goldsmith that she had the opportunity to work at such a large scale and in an architectural setting. She meticulously researched the forms, colors, and textures she would use for the mural and presented two models to the University before a combination of her two designs was approved. For the final work, she painstakingly formed, glazed, and fired 400 individual tiles weighing in total about 4000 pounds, a sheer technical feat. In consultation with Colburn and the building engineers, she devised a way to incorporate built-in light fixtures into her cloud formations that would cast dramatic light across the varied ridges and textures of the mural’s surface.

After three years of planning and labor, she assembled and adhered the 400 tiles with epoxy to the walls and ceiling of the vestibule in the new Henry Hinds Laboratory for Geophysical Sciences. Overall the large scale and dense amount of variation and detail within the enclosed space create a truly immersive environment. This mural would have a lasting impact on all her subsequent work. In a 1969 Ceramics Monthly article, when predicting the future direction of her work, Duckworth is quoted as saying, “this would include a greater use of my work on a larger scale in an architectural setting.” Four years later in a paper she gave at the University of Chicago she reflected:

I was very lucky because the three words given to me by Julian Goldsmith as possible subject matter: earth, water, sky fitted in so well with my predilections. He also gave me a book on geomorphology that had such an influence on me that I can date some of my work by calling it pre–geomorphology and post–geomorphology periods.

Geomorphology, the science of landforms, utilizes both a close inspection of the substances of earth and also aerial views of earth’s surface. Duckworth creatively interpreted both perspectives of the earth in Earth, Water, Sky and the other two murals she would later complete in the Chicago area. All three combine a close view of sediment or earth strata in brown, textured glazes with a sense of overlooking cloud patterns or elevation rings. Even her subsequent large stoneware sculptures and smaller porcelain works feature similar fluid undulating lines and biomorphic forms.

The images of the earth’s surface that inspired Duckworth’s work were made possible by recent developments in air and space technology. With the launch of Sputnik I in 1957 and Vanguard I in 1958, the space age began and the new technology captured a perspective of earth from space that had never been possible before. Duckworth noted that, in addition to geomorphological books and weather satellite images, she referenced Mariner 9 photographs looking back at earth. In Earth, Water, Sky, the glass filled craters, glazed–brown clay ridges, and the symmetrical cinder cone shape of Mt. Fuji present an image of a planetary surface that had been almost unimaginable just a decade prior. These aerial views of earth on both the walls and ceiling, interspersed with deep views of the earth’s layers, together create a totally immersive yet disorienting effect.

This combination of subterranean and aerial views of earth parallels the changes happening in the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago during this time. On July 1, 1961 the University merged the geology and meteorology departments, a move that combined the study of earth and sky. The newly expanded department, spurred on by the rapid technological advancements of the 1960s, launched new experiments funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. The urgency and interest with which the government and funding sources turned toward scientific research prompted the University to prioritize the creation of a new Geophysical Sciences building. For the design of the new 5–million–dollar building, Colburn incorporated a central utilities core that allows each laboratory space to adapt to fast–paced technological developments.

Although Colburn’s design broke from traditional architectural idioms, like so many other architects during this socially tumultuous decade, he also chose to incorporate reinterpretations of gothic elements seen throughout the campus. Most notably, brutalist spires that are also functional ventilation shafts adorn the the flat grey modular sides. In contrast to Colburn’s severely brutalist and functional architecture, Earth, Water, Sky, is a fantastical and immersive environment of geophysical forms. Although both Earth, Water, Sky and Hinds are forward–looking and hopeful responses to the 1960s, the mural seems to be an antidote to the cool rigidity of the exterior architecture. Earth, Water, Sky, is playful, rough, and lyrical, an apt entrance to a department that explores the forces and substances of the earth—as Goldsmith rightly foretold, when entering the building one would “pass through its essence.”

Written by Tessa Handa, a PhD student in Art History

Artist profile

Ruth Duckworth

(German, 1919-2009)

 

Ruth Duckworth

Biography

Ruth Duckworth began her long and idiosyncratic career as a sculptor at Liverpool College of Art in 1936 at the age of 17, after being forced to flee her native Germany as Hitler gained power. This was the beginning of a circuitous route as a professional artist, which would ultimately enable her to become one of the twentieth century’s most innovative and boundary–crossing sculptors. Eventually she would make her name as a master ceramicist, however, she would continue to use clay sculpturally, resisting the division between art and craft.

At the height of the war, she moved to Manchester and made her living performing puppet shows and carving puppet heads. After two years she briefly stopped carving and joined the war effort by working at two munitions factories in Manchester. At the end of World War II she moved to London, attended Kennington School of Art for a year to learn stone carving, and then worked carving stone for almost a decade. In the 1950s she started experimenting with simple clay sculptures and, at the recommendation of Lucie Rie, she decided to attend the prestigious Central School of Arts and Crafts to learn ceramics. Inspired by the abstract simplified forms of Cycladic sculpture at the British Museum and Henry Moore’s sculptures of fluid, semi–abstracted human bodies, she used clay sculpturally, creating unconventional and organic vessels and forms. By 1964 she had earned a reputation as a ceramicist in London and held several exhibitions at Primavera, a fine arts and craft gallery.

It was at this time that the University of Chicago called and offered Duckworth a one–year teaching position at Midway Studios. At the age of 46, Duckworth moved across the Atlantic to begin the most noteworthy chapter in her career. At her first show in the US with the Renaissance Society in January 1965, Julian Goldsmith, Chairman of the Geophysical Sciences Department, purchased one of her pieces, and almost immediately afterward she secured the commission for the ceramic mural, Earth, Water, Sky. The scale and duration of the project would ultimately convince her to stay in Chicago. Her early training in wood and stone sculpture and disinterest in conventional uses of clay propelled her down a path that threw into question the division between art and craft. Even after leaving the university in the 1970s, she worked out of her studio in Lakeview and continued to produce works that ranged from monumental sculpture to delicate vessels until her death in 2009 at the age of 90. From her large murals like Earth, Water, Sky (1969) to her small wall reliefs such as Untitled (1972) at the Smart Museum of Art, she demonstrated that not only is clay a viable medium for sculpture, but also that art and craft are not necessarily separate categories.

Written by Tessa Handa, a doctoral student in Art History

Sources

Oral history interview with Ruth Duckworth, 2001 April 27, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Carter, Karen, and Crystal Productions. Ruth Duckworth, a Life in Clay. Glenview, IL: Crystal Productions, 2002

Duckworth, Ruth, and Alice Westphal. Ruth Duckworth. Evanston, IL: Distributed by Exhibit A, Gallery of American Ceramics, 1977

Further Reading

Lauria, Jo., and Tony. Birks. RuthDuckworth: Modernist Sculptor. Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2004

Galusha, Emily, Mary Ann Nord, and Minn.) Northern Clay Center (Minneapolis. Clay Talks: Reflections by American Master Ceramists: Regis Masters Series 1997-2000. Minneapolis, MN: Northern Clay Center, 2004

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