Ruckus Rodeo at the Longmont Museum

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Many people will associate the artist Red Grooms with his often controversial Shoot Out installation on the roof of the Denver Art Museum.  That has been removed during the ongoing museum renovations, but Longmont art lovers of all ages can get their Grooms fix at the latest Longmont Museum exhibition. Ruckus Rodeo is a massive walk-through art installation consisting of colorful 3D figures depicting the rodeo experience.  Included are a rodeo queen and her steed, a bucking bronco, rodeo clowns and a giant yellow bull named Butter.

Red Grooms was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Design in 2003 and the International Sculpture Center awarded him a similar honor in April of this year.  His work reflects his view of the chaos of modern life, and has been described as “absurdist” and “full of the impetuous energy and puns of the Marx Brothers”.  Grooms created a number of artistic “happenings” in the 1950s and 1960s, then turned his attention to films in the 1970s.  They often starred his wife at the time, the artist Mimi Gross, and other members of his family, and also included hand drawn and other animated movies.

But it is as the creator of site-specific sculpture and installation art that Grooms is best known these days.  His two most famous ones, The City of Chicago and Ruckus Manhattan, were enormously popular, as was the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel, which Nashville residents hope to get out of storage and restore to its well-loved original place in the heart of the city.

Ruckus Rodeo was commissioned by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth back in 1976 for their Great American Rodeo exhibition.  Grooms prepared for construction by attending every rodeo at the Fort Worth Stock Show and sketching continuously.  He then worked with his Ruckus Construction team to create the 1,200 plus square feet installation, and it is now ready for the people of Longmont to enjoy.

Curator Jared Thompson has also gathered together artefacts and stories from the history of rodeo in Colorado to introduce Rodeo Ruckus.  Old saddles and ropes are on display, as well as photos and descriptions of early rodeo cowboys (and girls).  And who knew that one of the locations claiming to have organized the first rodeo was Deer Trail, Colorado, which is celebrating the 150^th anniversary of that event this coming 4^th July.

And then into the exhibit itself.  Even if you are familiar with Grooms’ work, this is definitely a “Wow!” moment.  The wildly coloured three-dimensional figures and animals surround the viewer with excitement, supporting Grooms’ "sculpto-pictorama" description of the work.  The enormous figures are made from sculpture wire, canvas, burlap, acrylic paint, and a fiberglass compound known as celastic.   Despite the installation being created for a 16 feet high space (the Longmont Museum’s ceiling is only 11 feet), the effect is not diminished and the rodeo queen and bucking bronco are still impressive.  Every direction you turn to inside the installation presents something different to stimulate and interest.

The Museum has also put together a “Kids’ Corrall” with several hands-on activities including lassoing and a hobbyhorse obstacle course.  And on Saturday 29^th June there will be a Ruckus Roundup and Chuck Wagon Dinner, complete with fiddle and banjo music, and even square dancing.

The Longmont Museum is at 400 Quail Road in Longmont, and the Rodeo Ruckus exhibit is showing from Friday, 14^th June 2019 through Sunday, 5^th January 2020.