By the late 1950s, George Rickey insisted that the new term “kinetic sculpture,” rather than mobiles, be used to describe his work. In his earliest sculptures he developed his later-on signature language using almost mathematical steel lines and planes to compose his works. But from the beginning, Rickey referred to natural forms and movements, an approach clearly different from Calder’s formal idea. Rickey described his interest in natural forms, and even more natural movements, as follows: “Types of motion available to me are, mostly, observable every day in our natural environment. In clouds, sea, falling leaves, waving grass, kits, sails, soaring birds, and flying fish, slamming doors and shutters, hurricanes, whirlwinds and sandstorms, sometimes silent, sometimes shuddering or roaring, sometimes passing through lips, reeds, or pipes as music, air moves on.”
In “Little Vine with Copper”, the reference to nature in form and title and in the movement of the leaves, is as visible as is a still close relationship to Calder’s stabile-mobiles. But George Rickey already moves away from symbolic representation towards an idea of the movement and its spirit - which is to become the essence of his sculpture.
