Ruckus Manhattan1976

Grooms' sculptural masterpiece "Ruckus Manhattan" took thirteen months to contruct. It was originally meant to encompass all of Manhattan Island up to the Cloisters, but time and money ran out of Midtown Manhattan. The work was desinged for 88 glass-enclosed space with thirty-foot high ceilings. To prepare for this huge environmental sculpture "celebrating" in Karen Cooper's words, "the gritty glamour and chaotic beauty that is New York City," Red and Mimi Grooms hiked and rode through Manhattan, making sketches and taking photographs. Then they collected collaborators and went to work, using tons of hardware, paints, elastic, steel, and fabric. RUCKUS MANHATTAN was filmed during this entire process. It uses undercraking and pixillation to express Grooms' comic vision, as well as the frentic pace of both his work and of New York City. "The soundtrack," writes Larry Qualls in Art & Cinema, "aids in this evocation of the energy of creation with its collage of most musical forms from rock to Rossini, amidst which are interspersed poetic readings by Mimi Grooms."