Stephen DeStaebler
About Artist Stephen De Staebler
Berkeley-based artist Stephen De Staebler is widely known for his evocative renderings of the human figure in both clay and bronze. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1933 and attended Princeton University, graduating with a B.A. in religion. During his summers as an undergraduate he studied at Black Mountain College, where the faculty included such pioneering artists as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Willem and Elaine de Kooning. At BMC De Staebler was exposed to ceramic artist Peter Voulkos, among others, who had a significant influence on his artistic development. In addition to his work in clay and bronze, De Staebler has also worked with printmaking and monotypes.
In March of this year I had the extraordinary opportunity to interview Mr. De Staebler in person at his home in the Berkeley hills. The grounds of his home and studio are practically littered with both finished and unfinished works, some of which I recognized from coffee table books on ceramic art.
I asked Mr. De Staebler about the history behind the public art site of “Three Figures:”
The installation was commissioned by the City of Oakland. Working in partnership with a local architecture firm, De Staebler and the architect generated a design for an outdoor theater based on the ancient Greek theaters (not an “amphitheater,” he said, as that refers to a full circle as opposed to the semicircular seating of this site). In the initial meetings with the city and all throughout the process there were no problems or major objections, he noted with some surprise. As an artist, you learn to expect resistance, he said, but this particular project went very smoothly–everyone liked the project.
De Staebler and the architect imagined the space as a place to hold performances, and proposed to use the storage room behind the theater seating as a greenroom or staging area for performers, but the city never embraced this idea, and the storage room remained as it was.
On the specifics of the site:
The paving at the base of the theater is a circle, as in Greek theaters. The spacing of the bronze figures throughout the space was not deliberate as De Staebler has done for other installations. He mentioned that he found the curve of the back wall to be subtle but very satisfying, and felt that the figures worked well off that. The seated figures are male and female, and the winged figure is meant to be an angel.
The groove in the wall was De Staebler’s contribution, and is reminiscent of an older installation that he did for New Harmony Inn Conference Center in Indiana, in which a groove in the wall projects up through the space and tapers away into the wall. In speaking of his work, particularly installations such as this one, De Staebler says he takes seriously the rhythms
of the space.
At the time of the design and installation of the project (1993), the construction site across the 13th Street pedestrian walkway was just an empty lot of weeds with wire fencing.
Some of the figures, as with many of De Staebler’s figures, are missing limbs. He calls these “incomplete” bodies.
Blue Shoulder (1986)
could you be more specific as to the location of these works? thanks