About the Artist
RICHARD CRIDDLE is a British sculptor who moved to New England in 1996. He now lives in southern Vermont and works in North Adams, Massachusetts.
He studied Fine Art Sculpture at the Central School of Art & Design in London where he received a BA (honours) degree, graduating on to the Royal College of Art to study bronze casting under Sri Lankan master founder Tissa Ranasinghe.
After teaching for several years in South Wales, Criddle returned to London to complete a three-year post graduate diploma at the Royal Academy Schools, funded by a scholarship from the Henry Moore Foundation.
During an immensely diverse career in sculpture, Criddle has worked as a college lecturer, an art fabricator, a foundry and studio consultant, a model-maker, an artisan, and a foundry-worker in the United States and the United Kingdom. He established bronze foundries for both academic institutions and commercial enterprises. Between 1988 and 1994 his successful company Mentmore Sculpture Services Ltd. executed a wide range of commissions for clients such as English National Opera, the Archbishop of Cyprus and Pinewood Film Studios.
Criddle has completed several major public art commissions, most notably his series of seven fabricated steel sculptures Industrial Shrines for the Black Country Route, a major highway in England's West Midlands. In the US, Criddle designed Turning True New-Arc, a public sculpture for New Jersey Transit, on permanent display outside Penn Station, Newark, New Jersey.
Criddle has exhibited his sculpture throughout the U.K., including twice at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and in the U.S., most recently at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' Gallery 51.
Richard Criddle has been the Director of Fabrication & Art Installation since 1998 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and has been involved in the installation of all Kidspace exhibitions.
PAST EXHIBITION
It's Rude to Stare: Drawings and Sculpture
by Richard Criddle
October 4, 2007 - February 24, 2008
It's Rude to Stare features the sculpture and drawings of English-born, Vermont-based artist Richard Criddle. In a personal 'archaeological dig' into his childhood fears and stories, Criddle, as many of us do, interprets these memories as larger than life. He presents his autobiography as oversized sculptural figures made from wood, bronze, fabricated steel and found objects such as wooden blinds, furniture components, a furnace shovel and heavy industrial hardware.
 
Criddle's trip down memory lane produces vivid impressions of people from his past. Many of the sculptures were inspired by real people who made a lasting impact on the artist, including his school teachers, a grumpy war veteran, and a disabled child (to whom his mother told him "it was rude to stare"). Criddle merges these true stories of actual people with those found in folklore to create hybrid figures-half real, half mythological. Their sculptural presence in the gallery resonates with our collective and personal memories as well as the artist's own.
The collages, drawings, and mixed-media self-portraits in the exhibition reveal the artist's interest in how we experience ourselves in the past, present, and in relationship to others. These drawings, along with Criddle's huge sculptural figures, provoke us to consider: are we looking at them, or are we the object of scrutiny? Is the crowd looking at us?
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