Biography

Berkeley-based Stephen De Staebler is celebrated for his innovative method of building ceramic sculpture. Since he first began working with clay in the early 1960s as a student of renowned ceramist Peter Voulkos, De Staebler has continually embraced the idiosyncrasies and limitations of clay, literally throwing himself into the ceramic-making process. Daring to roll around, jump on, and otherwise manipulate the medium, De Staebler has developed a remarkable body of work in which the divisions between landscape and figure, figure and monument are constantly blurred, resulting in sculptures that are both baffling and peculiarly familiar.

Recognized today as one of the Bay Area’s most notable sculptors, De Staebler’s journey to art making was not direct. However, many of his experiences during early adulthood had a notable impact on his artistic development. While studying religion at Princeton University in the early 1950s, De Staebler began to grapple with one of the themes that would later emerge in his work, namely humankind’s relationship to nature. While at Princeton the artist enrolled in a summer program at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and studied with Ben Shahn and Robert Motherwell while he attempted to translate his ideas and emotions into paint. In 1958, De Staebler entered the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his secondary teaching credential and then began to pursue a Masters degree in art. In 1960, De Staebler met Voulkos, who would prove to be one of his most influential teachers. Art historian Dore Ashton describes the atmosphere at UC Berkeley as “a fabulous crucible brewing revolt and discovery.”1 She notes that “Voulkos had already broken the mold of the conventional ceramic artist … He had set out to show that anything might be possible with enough spirit and enough risk.”2 De Staebler embraced this attitude and began to appreciate the demands of wet clay, allowing it to manipulate him just as he manipulated it.

The give-and-take relationship that De Staebler developed with the medium has proved essential to his process. By working the clay with the force of his body rather than just his hands, the artist is able to use the natural forces of pressure and gravity to achieve the dramatic forms he desires. Whether presented as elegant wall hangings or towering columns, the fractured human form plays a central role in De Staebler’s sculpture, but rarely in its literal presence. His forms often appear to be weathered by time and nature, alternately emerging and disappearing into the surface or “landscape” of the clay. In Figure Column XXI the figurative element is most clearly evoked through the delicate foot that rests upon the sculpture’s pyramidal base. From there, the leg extends upward literally fading in and out of the surface of the structure. The subtlety of the figure takes on a decidedly columnar form, which seems to suggest an ancient monument fallen to ruin. Typical of De Staebler’s innovative building process, the monumental scale of the structure is created by the careful joining of individually fired pieces. The sections are stacked so that the ridges, folds, vertebrae, and other shapes along the surface align in such a way that they recall a continuous form built in both high and low relief. As art historian Peter Selz asserts, “The segmentation of these sculptures lends a sense of vertical rhythm to the figures, similar to the structure of stone drums in Doric columns.”3 De Staebler imitates the natural properties of the clay through his careful application of pigment. Rather than relying on vibrantly colored glazes, he mixes pigments directly into the clay or rubs them on the sculpture’s surface before the initial firing, resulting in a range of subtle colors that recall the earthy appearance of clay in its raw form. Using these techniques the artist brings together the natural elements of clay and the properties of clay building to create remarkable structures that navigate the space between nature, humanity, and monumentality. —L.W.

1. Dore Ashton, “Objects Worked by the Imagination for Their Innerness: The Sculpture of Stephen De Staebler,” Arts Magazine, November 1984, 141.
2. Ibid.
3. Peter Selz, “Stephen De Staebler’s ‘Figure Columns,’” Sculpture Magazine, May 2002, 27.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)


Born in St. Louis Missouri in 1933, De Staebler attended Princeton University, where he earned a degree in religion in 1954. He continued his studies at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where he studied with Ben Shahn and Robert Motherwell, and received his MA from UC Berkeley in 1961 under Peter Voulkos. He has taught at San Francisco State University since the 1960s. De Staebler has had solo exhibitions at the Oakland Museum of California Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, and the Hearst Gallery at St. Mary’s College, Moraga. His many public commissions include works for the Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit Chapel, Berkeley; the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, San Francisco; and the San Jose Convention Center. This would be the third piece by De Staebler to enter SJMA’s collection. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2003)


Stephen De Staebler was born in 1933 in Saint Louis, Missouri.  He received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1954 and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961.  He taught at San Francisco State College and San Francisco Art Institute in the 1960s and currently teaches at San Francisco State University.  De Staebler was the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Fulbright Scholarship (1954), two NEA Artists Fellowships (1979, 1981), and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1983).  His work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions nationwide, and in solo shows at CDS Gallery, New York, the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, Oakland Museum of California, and John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, among others.

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