History

As early as 1965, Rudd wanted to isolate his art from the architectural environment. He thought art was too dependent on the wall, the frame, even the nearby furniture of the gallery or room where the art was hung. He proposed to build a large sphere where people could walk in and see the painting all around.

By 1967, Rudd's paintings came off the wall and went onto the floor of the gallery space. In addition to these paintings and large, minimal sculptures, Rudd also experimented with hand painted film and slides, projected using wide angle lenses.

In 1970, using industrial floor materials, Rudd's grid paintings began at 16 feet wide and grew. These textured paintings were visually expansive, and dealt with imagined, open structures in a new type of space. These grid structures eventually were broken up and isolated as relief "planks" in a new series in 1971-73. New industrial materials, after years of dealing with tedious processes, allowed Rudd to return to very expressionistic processes with spray polyurethane foam by the end of 1973. This was the stuff that Hollywood uses for dramatic sets, but no individual artist had the equipment or foresight to explore it as much as Rudd.

Soon the studio filled up. Within these constantly growing studio environments, where the artist spent his days working and contemplating, large scale environmental concerns reappeared. The work echoed strange worlds- both in abstract forms or by haunting figurative humanoids. Sculptures were presented against a black space; many works were better suited for planetariums than contemporary art museums. There was a new realization that the studio was in itself, a great work, and to take some art works out of the studio was simply exhibiting random pieces without the whole. Early on in 1977, when a recession caused many small amusement parks to close, Rudd thought about purchasing the track and car system from closed "dark rides". Instead of skeletons suddenly flashing in front of the viewer, Rudd wanted his works to appear.

Environments that gave a sense of another time and another place perhaps not on this planet continued to haunt Rudd's work. And always, access to new materials and processes enhanced these emotions. Techniques and materials were naturally integrated into the work.

By 1987, Rudd wanted to enlarge a series of work using clear glass into gigantic 'iceberg' forms. Since no organic, clear material (like clay, plaster, styrofoam) existed, Rudd invented new ways to make it. This led to using million dollars worth of plastics machinery at G.E. Plastics. Because no one had ever done this before, Rudd's work blazed new trails.

Rudd's restlessness, and his constant examination of new art in new ways led to many novel approaches. Moving his studio to an old textile mill in 1990 with football fields of space at his disposal allowed Rudd to thoroughly examine these ideas. Although originally planned as a traveling museum exhibition, when space in the mill became available in 1995, construction of the exhibition started in earnest. Rudd was assisted by college student interns, and with continued assistance of colleagues and professionals, work was completed and the Dark Ride Project opened to the public on July 10, 1996.

If the viewer was allowed to venture inside Rudd's world, then Rudd wanted to make sure the viewer got the same visual "trip" he got. The Dark Ride Project became a better way to visit this new world.