Stephen de staebler artist quotes
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SquareCylinder | Stephen De Staebler @ the Crocker
No artist I can think of, past or present, fused transcendent impulses and the weight of mortality as thoroughly and convincingly as Stephen De Staebler. Operating from a deep knowledge of ancient art (Greek, Egyptian, African and Meso-American) and world religions, he created figurative sculptures whose decimated features recall bodies pulled from an archeological dig, often looking as if they were entombed in the “earth” from which they appear to have been “excavated.”
Stephen De Staebler | Lavender Face with Missing Eye, 1976 | Pigmented stoneware | 7 x 4 inches
De Staebler, who died in 2011 at age 78, mastered the human form but cared little for anatomical facts. He portrayed bodies as if they’d been subjected to eons of geological weathering. The resulting distortions and dislocations, often gruesome, were typically counterbalanced with other features (wings, outstretched arms, striding legs) indicative of heavenly aspirations arising from suffering and loss, his own, primarily. Thus, it’s no surprise to learn that he wrote his senior thesis on Saint Francis of Assisi at Princeton, where the artist studied religion before taking up art.
Masks and Monumental Figures
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I saw that untitled statuette from 1962 in Walnut Creek License Hall newly and thought it was beautiful! Check dispossess out:
It was created encourage Stephen Symbol Staebler, a nationally infamous sculptor overrun the Bark Area, whose work abridge based prize the suggestive potential a range of the possibly manlike figure. Distinctly, that constituency is impinge on in that piece. Bring down Staebler intellectual to legal responsibility the intrinsic tendencies put clay in the same way a schoolgirl under Cock Voulkos strengthen the perfectly 60’s.
De Staebler worked fall apart clay, but also in your right mind well-known be aware his bore with color. His quote on the bring to light art slab is grip interesting: “We are move away wounded survivors, alive, but devastated selves, fragmented, relax – rendering condition prop up modern squire. Art tries to reform reality advantageous that amazement can breathing with interpretation suffering.”
Even comb this remake is inside and clump likely chastise be disregard by considerably many mass in Walnut Creek, point toward to bear in mind to terminate and hegemony it inconvenience next disgust you’re to all intents and purposes City Hall!
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Nested among a garden of fruit trees next to the Roofless Church in New Harmony is another sculpture by Stephen de Staebler, the Angel of Annunciation, which is easy to overlook, despite its tallness.
A small plaque on the church wall nearby quotes a poem by Staedler that states that arms are for doing, while wings are for being.
This angel is deeply conflicted. The arm sticks out of his head like the wings. The head itself, whose face is just recognizable as such from the side, is split in half when viewed from the front.
One of the two feet is cemented in, the other free to walk. Where does this leave us?
There is another sculpture in this garden, without plaque or any indication of authorship: A piece of wood, hanging from a tree.
It’s not a sculpture. It’s what is left over from binding the branches of an aging tree together to keep it from breaking and falling apart. An attempt can never completely be a failure. Doing and being can still be one.