Blane De St. Croix

Last updated

Blane De St. Croix
BlanePortraitMiami.jpg
Born
1954 Boston, MA
NationalityAmerican
Education Massachusetts College of Art (BFA), Cranbrook Academy of Art (MFA)
Known forContemporary Sculpture, Monumental Installation, Land Art, Geopolitical Art, Environmental Art
Awards Guggenheim Fellowship, Smithsonian Artist Research Award, Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award, Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant
Website https://blanedestcroix.com

Blane De St. Croix (born in Boston, MA) is an artist best known for his monumental landscape sculptures and installations.

Contents

His sculpture investigates the human relationship to the contemporary landscape and the ecological and geopolitical conflicts embedded in that relationship. [1] His practice is founded on extensive field research and incorporates discourses on art, cultural geography, ecology and the repurposing of the landscape genre, traditionally associated with painting, into sculptural statements. [2]

De St. Croix has been awarded numerous awards and fellowships including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors in 2009, [3] a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010, a Massachusetts College of Art and Design Alumni Award for Outstanding Creative Accomplishment in 2011, [4] The Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship in 2015, The Brian Wall Award for Sculptors in 2020, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s Lee Krasner Award, in recognition of a lifetime of artistic achievement, in 2020. [5]

Life and career

De St. Croix earned a BFA in sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA and an MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI. [6]

De St. Croix has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in solo and group shows at venues including: Fredericks & Freiser, New York, NY; Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; The Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; The Asia Society, Houston, TX; Värmlands Museum, Karlstad, Sweden; The Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA. Additionally, his work is included in both institutional and private collections in the United States and abroad. His residencies include multiple MacDowell Colony Fellowships, Peterborough, NH; a Yaddo Artist Residency, Saratoga Springs, NY; a Joan Mitchell Center Residency, New Orleans, LA; The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Award Space Program, Brooklyn, NY; and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE.

His work has been written about in publications including New York Magazine, The New York Times, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Artnet, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg, Art Daily, ABC News, New Art Examiner, and The Miami Herald. His work is represented by Fredericks & Freiser, New York, NY. [7]

Selected works and projects

Early works

Early in his career De St. Croix was interested in ecology, nature, landscape and perception. In works like Excavation (1994) and Bed of Wicker, Bed of Straw, Bed of Clay (1995) De St. Croix brought outdoor environments indoors, and initiated his work with sculptural landscape. De St. Croix began to sculpt in miniature after being employed to build scale model theater sets, which brought him to experiment with scale in his own work. [8]

Landscape Section: Border: North/South Korea (2008) Landscape Section, North-South Korea by Blane De St. Croix.jpg
Landscape Section: Border: North/South Korea (2008)

Landscape Section: Border: North/South Korea (2008)

De St. Croix's depopulated small-scale model of the topography and fence-architecture of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea observes the success of the structure and barrier [9] while reflecting on the constructed and artificial nature of borders. [10]

Mountain Strip (2009)

Rooted in research done in West Virginia where he met the anti-mining environmental activist Larry Gibson, [11] the monumental sculptural installation Mountain Strip, over forty feet long and twenty-two feet high, reconstructed topography of a section of the strip-mined Kayford Mountain Ridge top in West Virginia. [12]

Broken Landscape II (2010)

De St. Croix's 80 ft long sculpture Broken Landscape II depicts a section of the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas. [13] The art critic Jerry Saltz wrote that "Lovingly detailed with hills, rocks, trees, and (of course) fencing, it expresses the desolation, desperation, and absurdity of trying to wall off one country from another. It makes both the sculpture and the policy debates seem that much more diabolical and impossible." [14]

Mountain Views (2011)

Mountain Views (2011) Mountain Views by Blane De St. Croix.jpg
Mountain Views (2011)

Mountain Views is a monumental landscape sculpture depicting an extinct mountain range that was installed in New York City's Socrates Sculpture Park. Installed in 2011, the sculpture obstructed the New York City skyline, with the mountains acting as memorials to their own destruction caused by mountain top removal coal mining, and gesturing to a major source of energy for the city. [15]

Nomadic Landscape (2012)

The sculpture Nomadic Landscape depicts the Mongolian Gobi Desert and was created in situ in 2012. The sculpture uses its shipping crate as a sculptural pedestal [16] and natural materials collected from the Gobi desert. [17]

Floating Fire (2014)

The suspended sculpture Floating Fire depicts fragmented scenes of the Florida Everglades reserve in the aftermath of encroachment and forest fires. [8] The art historian Tami Katz-Freiman said of the sculpture that "The fragment of earth that appears in this work contains the scorched remains of plants and a pond of water. These natural vestiges seem to have been uprooted from the Sawgrass Plains in the aftermath of an ecological disaster, in order to be preserved in the museum as the last remains of a vanished world." [18]

Pyramiden/Permafrost (2014)

The sculpture Pyramiden / Permafrost was created after a research trip to the Svalbard Archipelago and takes its name from the abandoned soviet settlement of Pyramiden, a utopian arctic coal mining community founded in 1927 and abandoned in 1998. [19] The sculpture depicts the iconic, eponymous mountain peak overlooking the town. One side of the sculpture is a pristine representation of the snow-covered peak, the other side exposes a cross section of the mountain's dark interior and the deep permafrost of the arctic landscape, recalling a dystopian underside of the failed community and ideology. [20]

Dead Ice (2014)

The sculpture Dead Ice was created after De St. Croix’ research trip to the Svalbard Archipelago in the Arctic Circle in 2013. The monumental sculpture features two distinct sides that divide the space in two, one human and one natural, with the sculpture itself also acting as a border between the two created spaces. [7] On one side is depicted dead-ice, or a glacier that has ceased to move and begins melting when no longer sustained by its climate; on the other side is depicted the remnants of past artic discovery. [21]

Moving Landscape II (2020)

Moving Landscpe II is part of the Gem State exhibition at the Sun Valley Museum of Art where De St. Croix participated in a residency in the fall of 2019. Inspired by the diversity of geological formations he encountered and the history of Sun Valley as a Union Pacific destination, De St. Croix has created an installation for the exhibition—a model Union Pacific train pulling cars that carry small sculptural models of the sites that De St. Croix visited during the residency. [22]

Hollow Ground (2020) Hollow Ground (2020).jpg
Hollow Ground (2020)

Hollow Ground (2020)

In 2019, De St. Croix visited Utqiagvik, Alaska, to observe the dissolving permafrost as a result of climate change. Using techniques including model-making, theater, and special effects, De St. Croix combines recycled styrofoam with eco-resins and other earth-friendly materials to model the surface of Hollow Ground. De St. Croix uses first hand experiences of the landscape to give viewers a glimpse into the future.  This sculpture was featured in Blane De St. Croix's solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2020 - 2021. [23]

Alchemist Triptych (2020)

Alchemist Triptych is a sculpture that represents mineral mines extracted from the earth in hanging and tapered concentric rings. Each mineral mine has a corresponding hole in the floor which depicts the healing ground in the face of extraction. This sculpture was featured in Blane De St. Croix's solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2020 - 2021. [23]

Over Ice (2020)

Over Ice is a cast paper relief sculpture made from handmade paper which is based on sight photography from Svalbard depicting an aerial survey of the landscape below. [23] The cast paper was made in collaboration with the Dieu Donné paper studio in Brooklyn, New York, a non-profit cultural institution which collaborates in the creation of contemporary art using the process of hand papermaking. [24] This relief sculpture was featured in Blane De St. Croix's solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2020 - 2021. [23]

How to Move a Landscape (2020)

The film How to Move a Landscape is a collaboration between Tony Gerber and Blane De St. Croix which follows De St. Croix's trip to Utqiagvik, Alaska in 2019. The documentary style film is about the De St. Croix's artistic process and work. Preliminary footage from the film was featured in Blane De St. Croix's solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, 2020 - 2021. [23]

Related Research Articles

Jean Shin is an American artist living in Brooklyn, NY. She is known for creating elaborate sculptures and site-specific installations using accumulated cast-off materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Dailey (glass artist)</span> American artist

Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duke Riley</span>

Duke Riley is an American artist. Riley earned a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a MFA in Sculpture from the Pratt Institute. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is noted for a body of work incorporating the seafarer's craft with nautical history, as well as the host of a series of illegal clambakes on the Brooklyn waterfront for the New York artistic community. Riley told the Village Voice that he has "always been interested in the space where water meets land in the urban landscape."

Petah Coyne is a contemporary American sculptor and photographer best known for her large and small scale hanging sculptures and floor installations. Working in innovative and disparate materials, her media has ranged from the organic to the ephemeral, from incorporating dead fish, mud, sticks, hay, hair, black sand, specially-formulated and patented wax, satin ribbons, silk flowers, to more recently, velvet, taxidermy, and cast wax statuary. Coyne's sculptures and photographs have been the subject of more than 30 solo museum exhibitions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aziz + Cucher</span> American artist duo

Aziz + Cucher, consisting of Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher, are American artists working collaboratively since meeting in graduate school in 1990 at the San Francisco Art Institute. They are considered pioneers in the field of digital imaging and post-photography, with projects exhibited at numerous international venues, including the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Miss</span> American environmental artist (born 1944)

Mary Miss is an American artist and designer. Her work has crossed boundaries between architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and urban design. Her installations are collaborative in nature: she has worked with scientists, historians, designers, and public administrators. She is primarily interested in how to engage the public in decoding their surrounding environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polly Apfelbaum</span> American contemporary visual artist (born 1955)

Polly E. Apfelbaum is an American contemporary visual artist, who is primarily known for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings". She currently lives and works in New York City, New York.

Rochelle Feinstein is a contemporary American visual artist that makes abstract paintings, prints, video, sculpture, and installations that explore language and contemporary culture. She was appointed professor in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art in 1994, where she also served as director of graduate studies, until becoming professor emerita in 2017.

Laylah Ali (born 1968) is a contemporary visual artist known for paintings in which ambiguous race relations are depicted with a graphic clarity and cartoon strip format.

Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.

Onishi Yasuaki is a Japanese artist working in the mediums of installation, sculpture, and painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Letha Wilson</span> American artist

Letha Wilson is an American artist working in photography and sculpture. She received her BFA from Syracuse University and her MFA from Hunter College. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, International Center of Photography, and Hauser & Wirth, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen O'Toole</span> American painter and educator

Helen O'Toole is an Irish-born painter based in the United States, who is known for abstract paintings suggestive of landscape. She has exhibited throughout Ireland and the United States, in Singapore, and at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Portland Art Museum, Chicago Cultural Center, Tacoma Art Museum, and Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore. Her work has been featured in the journals Artforum, Arts Magazine, New Art Examiner, and Zyzzyva, as well as the Chicago Tribune,The Irish Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and National Public Radio. Art writers frequently discuss the interplay in her work between abstraction, the evocation of otherworldly light, land and space, and a commitment to investigating meaning through a painting process akin to the processes of cultivation and excavation. Artforum critic James Yood wrote, "echoing the often inchoate quality of nature, her paint surges toward mystery and hints at a kind of chiaroscuro of the spirit"; curator Bonnie Laing-Malcomson suggests her "richly colored monumental paintings evoke the moody landscape of her rural Irish homeland, summoning the force of J. M. W. Turner and Mark Rothko." She has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts, a Contemporary Northwest Art Award, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (2013), among other awards. O'Toole lives in Seattle, Washington and is Professor of Art and Chair of the Painting and Drawing Program at the University of Washington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Priscila De Carvalho</span> Brazilian-American contemporary artist

Priscila De Carvalho is a Brazilian-born American contemporary artist who is known for paintings, sculptures, murals, site-specific art installations, and permanent public art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juliana Cerqueira Leite</span> Brazilian sculptor based in New York (born 1981)

Juliana Cerqueira Leite is a Brazilian sculptor based in New York, known for creating large-scale works that explores the physical presence of the human body. She is considered to push the boundaries of sculpture.

Barbara Noah is an artist who currently works with digital prints and mixed media, with past work in public art, photography, painting, print, and sculpture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diana Shpungin</span> Latvian multidisciplinary artist

Diana Shpungin is a Latvian-born American multidisciplinary artist. She is known for her work in drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, video, sound, and hand-drawn pencil animation. Her work explores non-traditional ideas of drawing through sculptural and time-based processes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allison Janae Hamilton</span> American visual artist

Allison Janae Hamilton is a contemporary American artist who works in sculpture, installation, photography and film.

Brie Ruais is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York, working in large “multi-faceted” ceramic sculptures, performance, photography, video, and site-specific installation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Levine</span> Artist

Erik Levine is an American visual artist. He is a Professor of Art in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

References

  1. ↑ "Blane De St. Croix – Exhibitions – Fredericks & Freiser". fredericksfreisergallery.com. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  2. ↑ Ketner II, Joseph D. (May 9, 2014). "Dead Ice". Issuu. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  3. ↑ Foundation, Joan Mitchell. "Artist Programs » Artist Grants". joanmitchellfoundation.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  4. ↑ "2011 Alumni Award Recipients". alumni.massart.edu. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awards More Than $3 Million in Grants". Artforum. April 17, 2019. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  6. ↑ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Blane De St. Croix" . Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  7. 1 2 "Blane De St. Croix – Artists – Fredericks & Freiser". fredericksfreisergallery.com. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  8. 1 2 "December 2011 Sculpture Magazine – Blane De St. Croix". sculpture.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  9. ↑ "ARTPULSE MAGAZINE » Reviews » Where Do We Migrate To?" . Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  10. ↑ Markus, David (June 2, 2012). "Where Do We Migrate To". Art in America. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  11. ↑ "A Show You Should See : #1". mutualart.com. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  12. ↑ "Blane de st croix". Black & White Project Space. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  13. ↑ "publications". blane de st. croix. April 9, 2013. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  14. ↑ Saltz, Jerry (April 13, 2009). "Art" (PDF). New York. Retrieved April 26, 2019– via smackmellon.org.
  15. ↑ "Socrates Sculpture Park". socratessculpturepark.org. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  16. ↑ Connor, Jill (November 2013). "Thaw" (PDF). Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs.
  17. ↑ McRae, Tess (January 23, 2014). "Thaw". qchron.com/. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  18. ↑ Katz-Freiman, Tami (September 2012). "Unnatural" (PDF). katzfreiman.com/. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  19. ↑ "Blane De St. Croix – Exhibitions – Fredericks & Freiser". fredericksfreisergallery.com. Retrieved May 3, 2019.
  20. ↑ "Touched Nature" (PDF). Art Forum.
  21. ↑ Kistler, Ashley. "Forecast" (PDF). Blanedestcroix.com.
  22. ↑ Gem State, SVMOA (January 2, 2020). "Gem State Brochure". svmoa.org.
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 MoCA, Mass. "Blane De St. Croix, How to Move a Landscape Gallery Guide". Issuu. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  24. ↑ Dieu, Donné (January 2, 2020). "Dieu Donné Paper Studio". dieudonne.org.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.