The Fragmented Figures of Stephen de Staebler

The fractured human figure, has been the subject of Stephen de Staebler’s work for many years. He reduced the image of the body to just a human leg. His new works have become larger, nearly 6 feet in height, and stand witness to endurance. It’s fuses tangible parts of clay in a way that looks precarious and unbalanced.

The fractured human figure of his work may be related to his old teacher Peter Voulkos, who broke ceramic vessels and made them into clay sculptures.

Neil Brownsword works similar making forms out of shards found in his homeland the potteries.

De Staebler first started making horizontal forms in the image of landscape, Undulating hills often seen as anthropomorphic ridges and mountains. These works allude to the curvature of the human body. This concept could be of the intimates relationship between humans and the earth.

As he continued to make large sculpture he learned more about the clay being unpredictable weather wet and soft, or leather hard, cracked, brittle and dry.

After working with bronze he has returned back to fired clay, in a constant war against technology, which he feels is dehumanising and contaminating the world.

He is figures are not gender based, but have a universal appeal in their archaic and androgynous figuration. At times the artist feels the need to just give the form parts and segments instead of all of its entirety.

Some of his largest clay figures were done in sections and held up by a matrix of bricks these were put in place before their upright orientation. He uses a natural clay colours but also using copper oxide to obtain black patches and also pink turquoise blue and orange tonalities which provide a sense of vitality in their contrast hue of the clay.

He is an avid collector, and hangs on to things he has made from the past. He also keeps many things destined for the dump, with his hillside garden being a graveyard for sculptures remnants. These days he reclaims much of his work and assembling them into new works.

He has this craft of being contemporary and also ancient at the same time. His work has come round full circle.

Over the years De Staebler has fired hundreds of pieces in tests and experiments on clay to test for strength and colour. He saved many of these pieces and now incorporate them into his work. He says there is almost “magnetic attraction between them”, only he knows how the pieces will somehow fit together.