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Roy Staab |
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Roy Staab has been a practicing artist for almost fifty years, creating site-specific environmental installations both nationally and internationally. A native of Wisconsin, Staab attended school at the Layton School of Art, Milwaukee Institute of Technology, and the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Starting as a painter, who then became a drawer, Staab found himself creating site-specific installations in the late 1970s in New York. He found discarded items in dumpsters and built his installations indoors. By the early 1980s he moved his installations outside and in nature. Here he found that he was able to meditate with the site and create works that speak to their surroundings.
Although monumental in scale, Staab’s installations are ephemeral and subject to the destructive forces of nature. Made from local, natural materials and constructed on site, his work frames and reflects its surroundings. Staab sketches his preliminary drawing directly on the ground with string or twigs. Using his body as brush, fulcrum, and shuttle, Staab weaves precise, geometric forms that interact with the surrounding space and the land or water below. Shadows or reflections multiply and complicate the floating lines, changing with passing clouds and the angle of the sun. The work lasts only in photographs. Soon after completing each sculpture, Staab records an image and then lets nature reclaim his work.
Staab has exhibited and created installations both throughout the United States and internationally in countries such as Italy, Japan, India, Brazil, Demark, and Taiwan. While his work is temporary, Staab’s photographs are included in a variety of institutions including the Musee d’art moderne, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Top image: Big Round, 2008; footprints in the mud at low tide, in the tidal estuary at Marbaek Beach near Esbjerg, Denmark. Photo courtesy the artist.
Although monumental in scale, Staab’s installations are ephemeral and subject to the destructive forces of nature. Made from local, natural materials and constructed on site, his work frames and reflects its surroundings. Staab sketches his preliminary drawing directly on the ground with string or twigs. Using his body as brush, fulcrum, and shuttle, Staab weaves precise, geometric forms that interact with the surrounding space and the land or water below. Shadows or reflections multiply and complicate the floating lines, changing with passing clouds and the angle of the sun. The work lasts only in photographs. Soon after completing each sculpture, Staab records an image and then lets nature reclaim his work.
Staab has exhibited and created installations both throughout the United States and internationally in countries such as Italy, Japan, India, Brazil, Demark, and Taiwan. While his work is temporary, Staab’s photographs are included in a variety of institutions including the Musee d’art moderne, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, and Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Top image: Big Round, 2008; footprints in the mud at low tide, in the tidal estuary at Marbaek Beach near Esbjerg, Denmark. Photo courtesy the artist.
Artist's CV
Artist's Website
Select Press
Urban Milwaukee, "Roy Staab: Nature in Three Parts"
UWM Peck School of the Arts, "Roy Staab: Four Seasons/Four Corners"
Sculpture Magazine, "Roy Staab: Inova (Institute of Visual Arts", Kathryn Hixson
The New York Times, "Our Towns; An Artist's Masterpiece, Until the Next Storm Arrives" by Peter Applebome
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