Stephen De Staebler (American, born 1933)

Green Stele, 1973

About

• Stephen De Staebler has exploited clay’s plasticity, texture, and transformation by fire for more than fifty years. His sculptural manner was influenced by Peter Voulkos at the University of California, Berkeley. Under Voulkos’s urging, students such as De Staebler explored process and made their own physical engagement with material the subject of their work. The monumental scale De Staebler imparted to his works in clay, such as this early stele, required the innovation of new production and assembly techniques, pushing the boundaries of the medium. Conceived as a whole, Green Stele was formed from massive blocks of clay. The artist addressed these physically by throwing his entire body into the material, pounding, rolling, hacking, and parsing it into sections. Its surface is enhanced by oxide colorants alone, rubbed on before it is subjected to its one and only firing. The kiln-firing caused further shrinkage and evocative fissures made evident in the final assembly. Green Stele was featured in the artist’s first-ever solo exhibition at the Oakland Museum in 1974. Like the steles and other large sculptural works, De Staebler’s treatment of the human form was fractured, first in clay and then bronze. By 1998, he had focused solely on the human leg, and by 2001, on the most compact and fragile renderings yet of the body in his series Figure Columns. Of his figures the artist has said, “Clay reminds us of the link between our bodies and of the life of the earth. I wanted to reaffirm that essential tie.”¹