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Art & Ecology


Art & Ecology:

Perspectives and Issues



Ecological Design

Karen Stahlecker, The Wreckage II

by Don Krug

Karen Stahlecker is an environmental artist who lives and works in Poulsbo, Washington. She was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1954 and received an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982. Over the last twenty years, she has exhibited paper sculptures in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Her artwork often takes the form of books and shaped sculpture and investigates relationships between humans and their natural environment.

Currently, Stahlecker resides in Alaska. She has studied paper making in Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and Japan. Handmade paper is Stahlecker's medium of choice. The process she uses derives from Japanese tradition. Bast fibers: kozo, mitsumata, and gampi, are prepared by hand and made into pulp. The cooking, cleaning, and hand beating processes are physically demanding work. Stahlecker writes, "Papermaking is the means to the end in my work. It is a way to communicate ideas about our natural environment and human relationships to the earth. I use both two and three-dimensional approaches to explore these concepts. Large scale installations of paper help to remind viewers of their place as part of a larger scheme of things."

In 1986 Stahlecker moved to Anchorage, Alaska. She contends that the Alaskan wilderness has greatly affected her work, because it is "vast, humbling, and inspiring" (Cembalest, 1991, p. 103). However, Stahlecker's early work also celebrated nature and expressed hope for environmental regeneration. Stahlecker's work critically addresses issues of location. She uses her art to reinterpret how meanings and values associated with particular environmental issues are formed and circulated through public discourse and community communication. Stahlecker writes, "The earth is presently in extreme peril. My recent trilogy of installations: After a Clear-cut: Ghosts and Memories (1987), The Fragile Vessel and The Wreckage (1988), and Between Eden and Armeggedon (1989) each try to convey aspects of the damage and dangers. I am also trying to express some sense of just what we are losing and destroying." In 1986, Stahlecker saw her first clear-cut. She said, "they chop a forest down to little stubbles and mud. It was the most incredible scene, like a war on earth" (Cembalest, 1991, p. 103). Since that time, Stahlecker has begun making bold commentaries to promote ecological awareness.

The Wreckage II explores the devastating environmental effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Stahlecker points out, "Since 1986, I have lived and worked as an artist in Alaska. This is a frontier and the wilderness up here is vast, humbling and inspiring in a way I've rarely experienced elsewhere. One can experience nature which is pristine and as yet untouched by humans. But greed and shortsightedness abound. The great oil spill here in March, 1989, was a holocaust to life in the Prince William Sound, yet this is just another manifestation of the serious dangers that humans pose to the earth."

The Wreckage II was part of a larger 1988 sculpture called The Fragile Vessel. "Two forms comprise this installation. The large one was 25 feet high, 35 feet long, and 12 feet wide. It filled the open, split-level volume of the gallery at the Visual Arts Center of Alaska in Anchorage. A panoramic skyscape covered each side. The smaller piece, The Wreckage II, was a fragment of a hull. It included images of a nuclear explosion, pollution, and references to social and political unrest." Stahlecker used the ship form as a metaphor to explore relationships between creating and sustaining a healthy place to live on planet earth. The "spaceship earth" metaphor was coined in the 1960s when astronauts saw the earth from space for the first time and realized its minute and fragile existence in comparison to the vast universe. Her recent sculptures depict sinking ships or fragile vessels. Stahlecker writes, "Humankind is doing things to the point where the fragile vessel is sinking'" (Cembalest, 1991, p. 103).

Stahlecker exhibited The Wreckage II in Ground Zero/Beyond the Spill a juried exhibition in Anchorage, Alaska to commemorate the first anniversary of the Valdez oil spill. More than 250 entries were submitted for the exhibition "some from as far away as Europe, some from the U.S. mainland, and, surprisingly, many from local residents who were not artists. 'These communities are still suffering,' she says. 'Making art is therapeutic for them'" (Cembalest, 1991, p. 103).

Questions

References

Cembalest, R. (1991, Summer). The Ecological Art Explosion. Artnews, pp. 96-105.

Roukes, N. (1993). Sculpture in Paper. Worcester, Massachusetts: Davis Publications.

Licka, C. (1994). Karen Stahlecker's Paper Reveries. Hand Papermaking. Winter.










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