Daniel Rhodes


Daniel Rhodes was an American ceramic artist, sculptor, author and educator. During his 25 years on the faculty at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York, he built an international reputation as a potter, sculptor and authority on studio pottery.

Background

Born and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, the son of Daniel J and Margaret Agnes Rhodes, he began his art career by enrolling in summer courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago for four years, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in art history. He worked with Iowa painter Grant Wood for two summers at the Stone City Art Colony, and then also studied at the Art Students League of New York, where his teacher was Regionalist painter John Steuart Curry.
From 1935 to 1938, Rhodes lived in Fort Dodge, where he worked as a painter and muralist, participated in the Fort Dodge Art Guild, and lectured at the Blanden Art Gallery, Rhodes entered the graduate program at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where, in 1942, he became the first person to graduate from that school's Master of Fine Arts program.

Murals

Rhodes received several mural commissions from the Section of Painting and Sculpture. The first, titled Storm Lake, was created for the post office at Storm Lake, Iowa. Later, when a new post office was built, the mural was relocated to the public library.

In the same year, Rhodes and another Iowa painter named Howard C. Johnson were commissioned to create a large mural, planned for installation in the Agricultural Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. Titled Where tillage begins, other arts follow, the project was a commemoration of Iowa agriculture: planting, harvesting, production, and the meat packing industry. Unfortunately, it soon became the subject of a public derision. Opinionated passersby complained about factual inaccuracies in the mural, claimed that the figures of Iowans were too solemn, and objected to what they considered to be a style that was “too modern.” In 1946, Iowa State Fair Board Secretary Lloyd Cunningham ordered that the mural be taken down and that the dismantled pieces be used as scrap lumber. Apparently, all that now survives of the mural are a few photographs.
Another mural, at Marion, Iowa, is titled Communication by Mail. Rhodes painted this mural in the time-honored technique of fresco-secco, directly onto the Post Office's lobby wall. It features the role of the railroad in transporting mail. The Post Office was decommissioned and sold to the city of Marion in 1968. The city used the building as the City Hall until 2005. The building sat empty for a year before being bought by a bank. In June 2008, Anton Rajer a professional fine art conservator from Green Bay, WI will begin work to move the mural to the Marion Heritage Center. The mural is estimated to weigh approximately 2,000–3,000 pounds, and will be removed from the building in one piece by a team of contractors.
Rhodes created a mural, Airmail, for the U.S. Post Office in Piggott, Arkansas. On April 10, 2019, in Piggott, the US Postal Service released a series of postage stamps featuring post office murals, including "Airmail." The Postal Service planned to produce 30 million of the stamps.
His success in completing these projects led to Rhodes being commissioned for New Deal art projects in other states, including post office murals at Clayton, Missouri, and Glen Ellyn, Illinois; and a cafeteria mural in the main U.S. Navy building in Washington, D.C.

Later career

In 1939-40, Rhodes taught at the Art Students’ Workshop in Des Moines, and was also a guest lecturer at the Ottumwa Art Center and Iowa State University. In 1940, he married the former Lillyan Estelle Jacobs of Des Moines, a potter, sculptor and figurative painter whom he had met at Stone City. They raised two children, a daughter and a son. Lillyan Rhodes died in 1986.
After completing his MFA at Alfred University, the Rhodes remained in that area, where he worked as a designer for Glidden Pottery. In 1943, they moved to California, where he worked in San Jose as a researcher in high heat ceramics for the Henry J. Kaiser Corporation. Three years later, they moved to Menlo Park, California, where in 1947 they built a full-scale ceramic studio, and created thrown and cast ware for Gump's, the San Francisco department store. During the same period, Rhodes was briefly on the faculties at Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1947, they returned to New York State, where Rhodes joined the art department faculty of his alma mater, the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where he taught from 1947 to 1973.
While at Alfred University, Rhodes also taught summer sessions in ceramics at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles ; Black Mountain College, Asheville, North Carolina; and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine. Rhodes later taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
In the last phase of his life, Rhodes married Mary Beth Coulter. At the start of a two-month tour of college campuses, he was conducting a workshop at Sierra Nevada College when he was stricken by a heart attack and died in Reno, Nevada, in July 1989, aged 78.

Awards, honors and collections

Rhodes was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and lived in Japan from 1962-63. The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts awarded him a medal of citation for his contributions to teaching in 1973. His accomplishments were recognized by major retrospectives at the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, Fort Dodge, Iowa, and at Iowa State University, Ames.
Rhodes' work is in permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum ; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto ; Smithsonian Institution ; Museum of Contemporary Crafts ; Des Moines Art Center ; Blanden Memorial Art Museum ; and Cornell University.
In June 2011, a Facebook page, "Daniel Rhodes Centennial", was established to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Writings

As an authority on ceramics techniques, Rhodes is well known as an author among studio potters and ceramic sculptors.