Geoffrey Hendricks, most renowned for his artwork with clouds, headstands performed all over the globe, and cooking delicious macrobiotic meals, was born in Littleton, New Hampshire in 1931 (updated In 2018, Geoff passed from our lives).
Hendricks attended Amherst College, Cooper Union Art School and Columbia University, where he got his masters degree in1962. Since the mid-60s he has been active with Fluxus, and when Happenings, Fluxus and Pop Art were just getting underway, he had the idea of “painting sky on everything.” His first show of sky work was at Bianchini Gallery, New York in 1966, followed by Tokyo Gallery (1968). He is sometimes referred to as “Cloudsmith.”
Recent solo shows include exhibitions at the Egon Schiele Art Centrum in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic; Galerie Esplanade, Bad Ischl, Austria; UC Santa Cruz Art Gallery in California; and the Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York City all in 2006; and at UnimediaModern, Genoa, Italy and Galerie Etage, Münster, Germany in 2008. A retrospective, Between Earth & Sky (in knowing one, one will know the other traveled through Canada, and an earlier retrospective, Day into Night, went to museums in Scandinavia and Poland. He has participated in numerous group shows and performances in Europe, Asia and North America, including the most important Fluxus exhibitions and festivals from Happenings & Fluxus, Kunstverein, Cologne (1970), and 1962 Wiesbaden FLUXUS 1982, Wiesbaden, Germany (1982), on to the recent Fluxus Continue 1963-2003 in Nice, France, and Fluxus East, that opened in Berlin fall 2007, and traveled through Europe, ending in Norway in October 2010. July 2010 he participated in Fluxus Banquet II in Lodz, Poland, and March 2011 he has a residency at the Nirox Foundation in South Africa. In 2003 Hendricks curated Critical Mass, Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia and Rutgers University, 1958-1972 at the Mead Art Museum, Amherst, MA, and the Mason Gross Art Galleries, New Brunswick, NJ, together with a restaging of George Maciunas' Flux-Mass. His catalogue for this exhibition, C. Carr has called “an invaluable addition to avant-garde history.” He was Professor Emeritus of Visual Art at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, where he taught from1956 to 2004. He lived and worked in New York City and Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada together with his husbandSur Rodney (Sur).