About The Artist

Rodney's work is sure to make you rethink the world around you and stir childlike fantasies where anything is possible. Whether you see his work as art, whimsical inventions or post-apocalyptic retro decor, he taps the past and gives it a future in ways everyone gets excited about. 

He always surprises with his precision refinement of a found object’s shape and form to better transition these pieces from their original purpose to a new one —and that’s how Rodney landed on Time magazine’s “Green Design 100 List,. His growing acclaim helped launch a television pilot, currently under network discussion and he has a spin off pitch already in the works.

"... the love child of Martha Stewart, MacGyver, Al Gore and Keith Richards. It's a spot-on (if highly implausible) characterization: Trice is artistic, handy, an avid recycler and a shaggy-haired fan of chunky jewelry." — Psychology Today Magazine.

My work is a kid in the candy store relentlessly playful and fascinated with well designed objects but who takes a deep dive into a future that sometimes seems dark, sad and possibly hopeless. Though I never give into the hopelessness I am ever aware of it’s presence.

There is definitely a lot of Mad Max meets Charles & Ray Eames in my work. Mine is an apocalyptic future brought upon us by the American Dream with generous room for domestic bliss, and meditative reminiscing over the quirky inventions of the“Harriet Carter” catalogs of days gone by. 

My own personal work has been an ever evolving exercise in playful reuse of anything I can get my hands onto. It has primarily taken the shape of furniture and lighting to this stage of my evolution but that is changing rapidly. 

For years my work made fun of home decor with whimsical demonstrations of reuse. That whimsy fused with a simplicity and a refined beauty help me to cushion scary human consumption truths but it also awarded me a spot on Time Magazine’s GREEN DESIGN 100 list (a list of the top 100 green designers to keep an eye on in the future). Interestingly, my work has been growing in scale since I have moved my studio home to Pittsburgh. I find it now focusing more on public installation with a greater clarity of vision regarding the relationship between the human race and planet earth in the past, present and most of all the future. The catalyst for this evolution is my official move of my studio home to Pittsburgh. I am thrilled by the new inspiration I am finding where I grew up and how my work is already transforming. 

I am also currently exploring merging my 3 decades of media experience with hi tech inventions, space/time travel and the idea of creating faux “archaeology finds” with objects from the future that tell clear stories of a past when people ignored impending environmental, social and economic realities. My passions are growing for the new world that we can amazingly build from the discards of the past. Doing so with a type of alter-ego “archeologist of the future”, uncovering objects from what would still be the future for us now, is a way to give viewers a real look at what is coming as though it already did. 

I didn't always care about the environment nor did I dream of being an artist obsessed with how we live and what we live with and the media bombardment we are all under. I was just that kid from Pittsburgh using all of my dad’s duct tape re-inventing the world the way I wanted it to be. Art & Design school helped me understand what Good Design meant and the depth of the manipulation of advertising stimulating our deadly consumption. My move to New York City immersed me into wild quantities of contemporary art, bold design statements and mid century modern furniture from around the world. 

Inspiration is all around but I particularly lift a glass to all things Mid-Century modern. The Eames and Mies van der Rohe to name a couple of the designers. Miro with his reimagined natural forms filled with his own exuberance made me weep at The Tate Modern so he is forever inspiring in ways I have yet to completely understand. Picasso’s found object sculptures, Frank Lloyd Wright with his, "If I had another fifteen years to work, I could rebuild this entire country, I could change the nation", and to include the dark side of me and humanity: Edward & Nancy Keinholz.

AND last but not least, Buckminster Fuller who said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller is deeply compelling to me and probably one of the greatest of my inspirations. 

Building that new model is what I’m here to do. And if I do it with whimsy, graphic boldness and with refined beauty doesn’t that make the hard truth go down so much easier?

Spoon full of sugar, right?

represented by Aaron Lloyd Barr / Bernstein & Andriulli  -  aaron@ba-reps.com  -  212-682-1490
rodney@tomtinc.com   -  646-772-6697

SOME of What people are saying...

“Brilliant!” — the legendary furniture designer Vladimir Kagan

…the love child of Martha Stewart, MacGyver, Al Gore & Keith Richards. It’s a spot-on (if highly implausible) characterization: Trice is artistic, handy, an avid recycler and a shaggy-haired fan of chunky jewelry. —Carlin Flora, Psychology Today  magazine

Je t’aime! Te amo! Ich liebe dich! This is truly sexy up cycling at its finest. —sexyupcycling.wordpress.com

The Duchamp of dumpster diving —visualseltzer.com

Rodney’s work is beautifully created, carefully constructed and totally functional — a perfect combination for these times. —Jackie Monk, Deputy Managing Editor, Real Simple magazine

A daring take on decorating. —Marie Claire magazine

“The most extensive and useful collection of repurposed housewares that we have seen to date.” — re-nest.com

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