In Open Triangles One Up and One Down (slender), from 1983, a three-dimensional form is carved in space by the triangles as they circle up, down, and around. The negative space of the environment frames the sculptures but also provides the source of their movement. When this source disappears—if, for instance, the wind stops blowing—the motion temporarily halts, but its potential is ever-present. The viewer is left to imagine how the activity and the forms it creates might continue. Rickey commented on this essential component of his works: "I realized that the form didn’t need to be a closed mass but could be a series of points or lines around which the mind makes an envelope."

from Kephart, Passages of Light and Time: George Rickey's Life in Motion (Notre Dame, 2009)