Sold at Auction: Daniel Rhodes

Daniel Rhodes (May 8, 1911 – July 23, 1989) was an American artist, known as a ceramic artist, muralist, sculptor, author and educator. During his 25 years (1947–1973) on the faculty at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York (a division of the State University of New York), he built an international reputation as a potter, sculptor and authority on studio pottery.

Rhodes was born on May 8, 1911 and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, the son of Daniel J. and Margaret Agnes (née Brennan) 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 (1929–1933), earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Art History.[1] He worked with Iowa painter Grant Wood for two summers (1932 and 1933) at the Stone City Art Colony, and then also studied at the Art Students League of New York (1933–34), 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 (now the Blanden Memorial Art Museum). While living in Iowa, he participated actively in the state's art circles, and frequently exhibited at the Iowa State Fair, where he won an unprecedented three consecutive annual sweepstakes awards for oil painting from 1938 to 1940, outdistancing a record held by Grant Wood.

After additional study in 1940 at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (where he began to work with clay), 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. After completing his MFA degree at Alfred University, the Rhodes remained in that area, where he worked as a designer for Glidden Pottery.

In 1939-40, Rhodes taught at the Art Students’ Workshop in Des Moines, Iowa and was also a guest lecturer at the Ottumwa Art Center and Iowa State University.

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.