Stephen Glueckert: EXPRESSION
2021 Artist-in-Residence at the Missoula Public Library
How was your experience as an Open AIR Artist-in-Residence?
I enjoyed my experience as an Open Air artist-in-Residence. As you know I initially had hoped to be hosted in residence at Travelers Rest and complete a body of landscape work. The change in venue definitely changed my approach. I felt that I was prepared for the residency and continued to exercise my daily studio routine. In some ways it simply provided me with a different environment in which to exercise my practice. In other ways it feathered quite nicely by exposing me to new tools (the 3D printing process and laser printer) which I quickly incorporated into some sculptures. I did produce 14 sculptures, and two coloring books, and as a continuation one larger sculpture I started in residence and just finished. Ira Sather-Olson the Makers Space Specialist is a saint and was a patient and caring teacher. I am so appreciative of him, the MPL and look forward to working with them in the future.
Stephen working on 3D model at the Missoula Public Library
What was your research process during this time?
I did some research while in residence, but I feel research is an ongoing endeavor in my studio practice. My research for the residency was simple. I came to the residency being prepared with gathering family homestead photographs, sketching House-Tree-Person compositions,which became sculptures, gathering pocket sketches which became coloring book pages, reading Alan Lomax American Music research, and viewing two Russian films The Steamroller and the Violin and Andrea Rublev. Both films about the state of the arts in our creative human zeitgeist. An important reference to address my understanding of the new technologies I revisited was Robert Persig’s book Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance. This helped me frame the ideas and concepts that I became comfortable and sometimes uncomfortable working with. I do believe that I have arrived at a different stage of art practice than perhaps I was as a younger artist. I have set aside a tendency to compartmentalize my creative decision making, a tendency I now see that grew from the shortcomings of higher education. I feel now that often pedantic instruction sidetracks the creative process. Today, I have no hesitation in executing ideas, mixing medias. and editing inferior ideas, purging that which is superfluous. Artists move through stages naturally and important avenues of profound influence are rooted in family cultural imprinting, travel and cultural immersion, and through individual relationships in communities who nurture self esteem and creative self expression. In spite of our best intentions the arts will flourish. The arts cannot and will not grow in a vacuum,and the relationship of artist and audience is a felicitous one. Without that symbiotic relationship I am unsure there is art. Today, playing music and listening, drawing, painting, writing, sculpting are all simply a river of intellectual turbulence which I am navigating. I have embraced all these different avenues of expression as one overlapping experience. The senses of listening and seeing have become precious and in time... sacred experiences. All in an effort to perpetuate hope.
Stephen creating a sculpture at the Missoula Public Library
What are you up to now (post Open AIR)?
I just finished a larger sculpture which I started at Open Air. I am sending off two sculptures produced at Open Air to a gallery in Billings. I am preparing for a January two person exhibition of landscapes at Gallery 709. I am preparing for a solo exhibition of Thomas Frances Meagher drawings which will visit 5 museums in Montana beginning in one year. I am researching Celtic Libraries and Irish Studies venues for this exhibition to begin to travel out of state. I hope to find a permanent home for this body of work. Like everyone, I am submitting for area art auctions and fundraisers. I have begun a series of drawings exploring the contrast of Romanticism and Realism. I am attempting to build two musical instruments from scratch, currently drying and splitting spruce. I have prepared a dozen canvases for winter drawing/painting projects. I have just published an essay about the work of Peter Kurinsky. I recently sent off an edition of prints to Mesa Art Museum 2021 edition for their collection, and am working on the 2022 plate for the same institution.
Art Work by Stephen Glueckert
What keeps you returning to this subject, body of work?
I believe narratives and storytelling are not exhausted in art practice. I feel fortunate to have been raised in Montana and think that living in this place, to some degree, has informed my work as an artist. Two of the greatest influences of the “kinetic” nature have to do with being raised working on a farm in the summers, and in an industrial laundry the remainder of the year. In both of those environments I was exposed to a great deal of machinery, particularly those driven by steam, and using boilers, gears, cams, balance of motion and centrifugal force. In the family laundry, when something broke down, it was always my father who fixed it. We often helped, and sometimes fixing this unusual machinery would go late into the evenings and demanded skills such as welding and fabricating. I miss my father and although he never spoke about art, I count him as the greatest influence in my life as a human being and as an artist.
Tell us about your most recent solo exhibition?
I have a few exhibitions in the works. I will be exhibiting in a two person exhibition with photographer Corbin Ross at Gallery 709 in January with works completed last year which are landscapes of the Missouri River. A will also have an exhibition Thomas Francis Meagher drawings which will tour the state to 5 venues beginning next November.I am thrilled that this exhibition received the bookings through the MAGDA conference in 2021. I have a few other irons in the fire with writing and music projects, and some negotiations underway. I will be showing in a two person exhibition in Billings next year date TBA.
Entitled "Flying Rat" - Mixed Media, 2020