John Van Alstine
John
mostly makes abstract sculptures using steel, granite, and other metals and
stone material. He is considered one of the most important living sculptors and
because of this has had and still has an amazing career in fine art.
He
started his college education in the early 1970’s and was mostly focused on his
skiing because that’s what got him to college through a ski scholarship. After
a while he found art and decided to focus on that full time. After school he
taught art as an assistant professor at several schools before quitting in 1986
and moving back to his home town in the Adirondack mts. and built a studio out
of an old historic saw mill where he still lives today.
John
has had numerous shows at amazing spaces and had many public works installed
over the years. He often mixes in his interest in Greek mythology and more
specifically the myth of Sisyphus.
In this myth there was a king who was punished by rolling a large stone
ball up a hill and watching it roll back down forever.
Most
of his work is huge in scale and is often composed of found objects. There are
metal parts that he finds at a scrap yard and incorporates them into most of
his work. The large stone chunks are rocks he finds at a local quarry and he
states that he generally does not
try to manipulate them much from their original form because nature does
a good enough job of that as it is.
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