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SCULPTURE MAGAZINE Summer 2000
Robert Stackhouse: Building Places
By Victor M. Cassidy
Robert Stackhouse calls his drawings and sculptures "a kind of dialogue." He builds large-scale sculptures, mostly temporary and site-specific, then reinvestigates them in watercolors that often lead to new sculptures.
During April, Stackhouse showed Resurgent, a 34-ft long, 9-ft high, 5 ft 2 in wide sculpture and works on paper at Klein Art Works, Chicago. In this exhibition, Stackhouse revisited his sculpture Angel Way and broke new ground in his use of aluminum and limestone.
Stackhouse created Angel Way in 1998 for Chicago's Navy Pier. Bolted together from wood, this work was 64 ft long and 17 ft high. On the night of July 3, Angel Way blew over in a storm. Next morning, without telling anyone, City of Chicago workers cut the piece apart with chain saws. They apparently reasoned that the damaged sculpture might endanger large crowds expected for Fourth of July celebrations.
The artist was devastated. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Angel Way had proper footings. Stackhouse felt that he was a professional whose work should survive bad weather.
Resurgent, which is a smaller, indoor version of Angel Way, recalls other sculptures by Stackhouse. Seen from above, the work has a canoe shape. The sides form a steep "A." They are covered with two-inch-square aluminum extrusions, which suggest wooden slats.
The artist provides a doorway for visitors to enter the work and experience the interior—to explore the path the sculpture creates. As he installed Resurgent, Stackhouse took great care with placement and lighting to create shadow patterns inside the sculpture and on an adjacent wall.
Resurgent is the artist's first sculpture in aluminum, which he calls "a natural material, very ancient." He says that he uses wood in most of his work for economic reasons. "If I only had one or two thousand dollars, I bought the cheapest lumber I could find and worked with one assistant," he states. "Two by fours are cheap, not organic. I managed to make them look organic."
He adds that his wooden sculptures are "positives for bronze works," which are "very expensive to cast." At times, he has worked with bronze-like extruded red brass and two-inch square steel. "I can construct in all the materials I use," he says. "That cuts out the expense of a fabricator."
Acknowledging that aluminum is "more permanent" than wood, the artist, who is now past 55 years of age, feels that he wants to create a legacy now. He calls himself a "post formalist," an unfashionable artist's artist, who "doesn't appear in print a lot," because critics don't know how to fit him into some art historical niche. "I've spent most of my life squirming out of niches," he says.
Resurgent looks bright, open, and inviting because the artist carefully spaces the extrusions to let light through in many directions. Even though they are bolted to the frame, the extrusions seem to float. Stackhouse brushes the aluminum on the exterior to catch the light, but leaves it cloudy on the interior for a more natural look.
On the floor of Resurgent are weathered limestone fence posts laid side to side. Nineteenth-century Kansas farmers used this post rock to hold up barbed wire fences that kept steers out of their fields. Wood was prohibitively costly in treeless Kansas.
The post rock comes from beds, which were laid down eons ago when a huge inland sea covered the American Midwest. The rock is full of fossils and the ends of the posts, which Stackhouse cuts off and exposes, are beautifully tan-colored.
Though the artist calls the rock a "joke," aimed at people who know that Angel Way blew over, he acknowledges that he welcomed the challenge of combining limestone with aluminum. The limestone softens the interior of Resurgent, adds visual richness to the exterior, and speaks to the artist's life.
Stackhouse grew up by lakes in New York State and Florida, and has used boat forms in his work for decades. He likes having pieces of seabed in Resurgent . The rock comes from Kansas where the artist has lived since 1997.
Resurgent's interior, a secure, formal world of light and shadow, is especially successful. "I went to school to be an architect," says Stackhouse. "I have a passion for architectural involvement—I like to build places."
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