About Artist Eric Rudd

Eric Rudd is a renowned sculptor and mixed-media artist. A first-generation American, he began exhibiting professionally at eighteen, with one of his early works displayed in the White House. Since then, his art has been featured in museums and galleries across the U.S. and internationally. 

Working from one of the largest private art studios in the country, Rudd combines traditional materials with new technologies, including robotics, theme park rides, industrial spray polyurethanes, and blow-molded polycarbonates.  His extensive use of rigid polyurethane foam with industrial processes, begun in 1972, has enabled the realization of monumental-sized sculptures that would be impossible using traditional materials. In 1987, Rudd also uniquely developed, in cooperation with G.E. Plastics (and continued in Japan in 1994 and in 2011 with Sabic Innovative Plastics), the first blow-molded, clear polycarbonate (Lexan™) sculptures ever made. These monumental works incorporate many of the traditional qualities of glassblowing, but with a strength, complexity, and scale not achievable with glass. Other projects have continued his use of polyurethane foam and polycarbonates in spray and blow-molding processes, as well as in combination with metal, robotics, and other materials and techniques.

His larger-scale projects include public, environmental installations featuring computer-programmed mobile viewing chairs that guide viewers through an artist-designed time sequence. The Dark Ride Project, a unique 15,000-square-foot exhibition that opened to the public in 1996 and ran for ten years, merged multimedia and interactive technology with new art forms, addressing cultural, physical, linguistic, and educational barriers to reach a broader audience. A highlight of the project was an actual eleven-minute ride on the robotic "Sensory Integrator" through "creative space." Rudd also collaborated for two years with a private satellite company on a proposed sculpture (Top Secret Project) designed to orbit in outer space. In 2003, Rudd co-founded, along with physicist Dr. Seeley, the Center for Robotic Arts @ MCLA. Projects there included Night Garden of Hesperides, featuring several large-scale robotic creatures moving throughout a massive interactive environment. Rudd has also created numerous independent robotic sculptures.  Since 2011, Rudd has concentrated on traditional collage applied to large-scale reliefs and sculptures. 

Born in Washington, D.C., Rudd majored in art at American University (1964–68) and also studied in Italy and Austria 1965 and 1966). Upon returning to the U.S., he was invited to join the Jefferson Place Gallery in Washington, D.C., where his work was exhibited from 1966 until the gallery’s closing in 1974.  In 1978, Rudd founded 52 O Street NW Studios, converting a large warehouse into studio spaces for himself and twenty other artists and galleries. This was the first artist building of its kind in Washington, D.C. Rudd also led the rescue of a downtown building that allowed the Washington Project for the Arts to use 15,000 square feet of space free of charge from 1981 to 1986, along with additional space for galleries and dance studios. He was a founding board member of the Washington Sculptors Group, which exhibits and promotes area sculptors.

In 1990, Rudd moved to North Adams, Massachusetts. His studio, located in the Historic Beaver Mill, is one of the largest individual artist studios in the country, encompassing a total of 80,000 square feet. Among his major works are a 150-figure sculptural epic titled A Chapel for Humanity, and his monumental Iceberg Installation composed of his Lexan sculptures, both on permanent display in North Adams. In addition to repurposing the 130,000 square foot Beaver Mill, Rudd renovated the 125,000 square foot Eclipse Mill into 40 large live/work condominium lofts for artists which today stands as one of the most successful artist buildings in the U.S. He has consulted for numerous communities on the expansion of arts spaces and has contributed to a wide range of projects supporting artist environments.

Rudd founded and served (pro bono) as director of the Contemporary Artists Center (CAC) from 1990 through 1999. The CAC enabled artists to create and experiment in large studio spaces, including access to one of the largest printing presses in the country (with a 5 x 10-foot bed). Each summer, the CAC attracted leading museum and gallery directors, critics, scholars, and artists from around the world to work with emerging talent.  In 2012, Rudd established the Barbara and Eric Rudd Art Foundation and the Berkshire Art Museum in North Adams, MA. 

Beyond his visual art, Rudd is a prolific author. He has written extensively for artists, with books such as A Short Seminar on Becoming a Serious Artist, Strategies for Serious Working Artists, Did I Leave the World a Mona Lisa? – A Memoir, The Art Studio/Loft Manual, and The Art World Dream – Alternative Strategies for Working Artists. His novels include The Butterfly Conspiracy, Heaven’s Last Call, Maple Syrup and Fish Sauce, and The Assassin’s New Clothes. His theatrical works include Wet Paint, Older Women in the Nude, and How to Write a Best-Selling Memoir. Additionally, he has authored illustrated children’s books such as The Day Something Strange Happened in Sayulita, The Artistic Robot, and A Street Becomes a Beach.

As an artist working on a large scale, Eric Rudd required significant space. Lacking substantial financial resources, he had to rely on ingenuity—seeking out overlooked and undervalued properties in areas not yet deemed viable. Acquired at bargain prices, these spaces were then transformed for artistic use through borrowed funds and what might best be described as “smoke and mirrors” and sweat labor.  Despite the risks, his ventures proved not only successful but also laid the groundwork for other artists to benefit from his efforts and inspired developers to replicate his pioneering model.

Development projects have included several commercial, residential and historic properties in Washington DC and western Massachusetts.  Large projects included the 1978 conversion of raw warehouse space into 25 studio/lofts (O Street Studios - the first such project in Washington D.C.), the conversion in 1980 of a 34,000 SF - 7th & D Streets Building into large gallery and arts related commercial spaces, including three floors of space donated for the Washington Project for the Arts.  Projects in North Adams included  the 1990 repurposing of the vacant 130,000 SF Beaver Mill into arts related studios and lofts, the 1999 development of the historic Flatiron Building into 18 condominium residential and art/retail units (called Gallery Row which also saved the historic Eagle Street), and in 2001-2005 the renovation of the 125,000 square foot Eclipse Mill into forty, large live/work studio loft condominiums.  He has also rescued two historic former churches and repurposed them into museum exhibition space.

As an artist knowledgeable in art and business, Rudd was asked to serve on the Northern Berkshire Economic Council Steering Committee, Northern Berkshire Industrial Park and Development Corporation's Art Technology Committee, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts Foundation, Inc, and board member for the Northern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce and the Berkshire Visitors Bureau. He has also worked, informally, to support the new Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in North Adams in 1999.  He served as at board member of the Berkshire Visitors Bureau, and a member of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, Cultural Arts Alliance and Berkshire Chamber of Commerce. 

Together with his wife, he worked as board member of La Festa, Inc. (a community multi-cultural festival and organization) and established the first 'Grand Auction' in Northern Berkshire, which raised more than $100,000 for local schools.  Together they have held tours of their loft project and the Contemporary Artists Center to local groups, held receptions for visiting artists and directors, including receptions on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce for visiting Governor Weld and the Berkshire Visitors Bureau as well as hosted meetings or worked on behalf of many other organizations.  

His annual “Eagle Street Beach,” created in 1999, turns an entire street into an urban beach using 250 tons of sand.  The event, which attracts hundreds of children and families to participate, is now being done more recently in major cities around the world.  Rudd was honored with the region’s prestigious Francis H. Hayden Memorial Award in 1999.

Eric Rudd has been active throughout the community in developing partnerships between art and business, as well as the reevaluation and preservation of abandoned historic buildings.  This new awareness has inspired several organizations to consider new options -- Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts to develop an arts-management degree program and the country’s first Robotic-Arts Program, NBIPDC to consider reuse of old mills in an arts’ based economy, and the City of North Adams to reassess historic properties in its downtown. He was also active in Sayulita, Mexico where he served as volunteer president of Group Pro Sayulita for three years.  Eric Rudd uniquely develops not only imaginative art ideas, but spends time to allow the community at-large to share in his excitement and energy. 

Eric Rudd lives in the Historic Beaver Mill, North Adams, Massachusetts and Sayulita, Mexico with his wife Barbara.  They have two grown children.