“I want to project the ephemeral of life in my artwork and I prefer the forces of nature to enhance and dismantle them as well. I like the work when it is very perfect and interacts in nature in color and reflection. I document my pieces with photographs, but art is an idea and nothing in life can be held onto.”
Roy Staab is a leading practitioner in the field known as environmental art. He strives to integrate his work seamlessly into its natural setting, enhancing and harmonizing with nature. Amy Lipton, Curator of ecoartspace, is asking for your help to present a site-specific sculpture by Roy Staab on the grounds of the Garrison Institute, a retreat and meditation center overlooking the Hudson River. Lipton has worked with Staab at several locations in the past including museums, galleries, sculpture parks, and festivals. ecoartspace is a bi-coastal non-profit organization that creates opportunities for addressing environmental issues through the arts.
ECOARTSPACE WEBSITE
An established artist, Roy Staab has been invited to create his outdoor installations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and South America. The Garrison Institute has invited the artist for a period of residency to create a work on their grounds. Staab would like to begin work now during the fall of 2011.The funding received will help support the creation of the work over the course of two weeks, travel expenses from Milwaukee and back, video documentation, and the production of photographic prints of the sculpture. If sufficient funds are not raised in the next few weeks, he will wait and create the work in Spring 2012.
Roy Staab is a sculptor, environmentalist and
photographer who creates site specific sculpture and land art in natural
settings. For over 30 years he has created ephemeral installations on four
continents using materials he finds on site such as reeds, bamboo, saplings and
grasses. He works for long hours, using nothing but his hands to weave and bind
these plants together, creating Zen-like sculptures whose duration depends on
weather and the forces of nature. The artist’s process includes observing, collecting,
assembling, refining and documenting. Staab’s works are large in scale, often
60 feet or more in size. His creations are simple geometries born of place, the
materials used and the local cultures of the places he visits around the world.
Their fleeting reflections when placed over water, the delicate nature of the
materials themselves, and the relentless tug of gravity, which inevitably
destroys them, serve as reminders of the fragile and transitory nature of life.
The Garrison Institute is a not-for-profit,
non-sectarian organization exploring the intersection of contemplation and
engaged action in the world. Their mission is to apply the transformative power
of contemplation to today's pressing social and environmental concerns, helping
build a more compassionate, resilient future. The Garrison Institute does not
have an art program or any funding for the creation of artworks. Roy Staab’s
sculpture built in and of the natural environment will be conducive to
meditation and contemplation for all those on retreat at the Garrison Institute
as well as for visitors.
“It
takes a passionate vision to make art that is ambitious in concept and scale,
meticulously engineered and handcrafted, and fully intended to be destroyed by
the elements. “ - Joyce Lovelace, American Craft Magazine November 2010
Roy Staab studied at the Layton
School of Art and received a BFA in 1969 from the University of Wisconsin,
Milwaukee. He spent many years in Paris and New York before returning to live
in Milwaukee in 1994. Staab has received commissions to create environmental
site installations in Italy, Denmark, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and
Brazil, as well as in many locations in the U.S. He has received many awards
including a Japan/American Artist Exchange Creative Artist Fellowship, The
Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, Pollock/Krasner Grant, and a Joan
Mitchell Foundation award. His paintings, drawings and photographs can be found
in the collections of the Musée d'art moderne and Le fonds national d'art
contemporain in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), and the Milwaukee
Art Museum.