John Van Alstine

John Van Alstine (born August 14, 1952) is an American contemporary art sculptor and former assistant professor of fine arts at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and the University of Maryland in College Park where he taught drawing and sculpture. He primarily creates abstract stone and metal sculptures. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States, as well as Europe and Asia.

Personal life and education John Van Alstine was born in 1952 in Gloversville, New York and raised in the Adirondack region of the state. He attended St. Lawrence University in 1970–1971. In 1973, he received a scholarship to attend the Blossom Festival School in Cleveland/Kent, Ohio, where he studied sculpture with Richard Stankiewicz and Richard Hunt. In 1974, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Kent State University. In 1976, he earned a Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University.

Professional background

Academia In 1976, Van Alstine was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, where he taught drawing and sculpture through 1980. He moved to Washington, D.C. and joined the faculty of the University of Maryland in College Park in 1980, where he taught in the art department through 1986. In 2008, Van Alstine was one of 50 artists to have his work chosen to be display at the 2008 Summer Olympics. The piece displayed, Rings of Unity – Circles of Inclusion, was based on the Sisyphus myth, consisting of a large piece of stone suspended in the middle of a 16-foot ring made of bronze. The piece took two weeks to create in a foundry. As of 2008, Van Alstine was represented by David Floria Gallery in Aspen, Colorado. Prominent solo gallery exhibitions have included Gerald Peters in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Nohra Haime in New York City; and C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland.

Public Works

Towards the Heavens – Large Scale and Broad Reaching Beginning in 1986 while continuing to work on human scale work in his studio, Van Alstine embarked on the first in a series of "Celestial" works where he combined the character of large-scale contemporary sculpture with the tradition and function of humankind's oldest scientific instrument – the calendar. Inspired by his travels to England, Mexico and the American west, he created works that together with their impressive scale, placement and design, simultaneously combine aspects of astronomy, physical science and contemporary art. "In our contemporary society we often lose sight of the natural occurrences that once impacted our ancestors and played an important role in shaping our collective conscious. The cyclical nature of the days, and seasons with their patterns light/darkness, plant/harvest, birth/ death have historically given meaning, structure and richness to our lives. This project offers the viewer an opportunity to regain awareness of these fundamental rhythms that continue to subconsciously shape our lives," Van Alstine wrote in 1986.

Responding to a specific site in Texas, Van Alstine created his first "celestial" sculpture using the calendar to connect art and science on the Austin College campus near Dallas. Using primitive stone forms suggesting ritual and observance, "Solstice Calendar" (1986) produces shadows of varying lengths based on the time of year marking the rhythms of season through solstice, equinox, solstice. Similar large scale works were created for SCR Super Computer Research Center in Washington in 1991, "Artery Sunwork" (1993) in Washington, DC and "Via Solaris" (2005–06) in Terre Haute, Indiana at Indiana State University. John Dorsey, staff art critic for the Baltimore Sun wrote, "Van Alstine's jaunty drawings recall his sculptures; they also exhibit a line reminiscent of Claes Oldenburg's, combined with sensitive use of color."

Van Alstine's early drawings were tight and functional, often used as "blueprints" for his system-based, arrested energy sculpture of the late 70s and early 80s. Like the sculpture that followed, the drawings soon became more loose and lyrical. By 1983, black and white charcoal drawings like Totem with Spike (1982) and Arch with Spikes (1983) were in keeping with the aggressively expressive three-dimensional works of that time; 4th Beast of Daniel (1983), and the unpainted version of Drastic Measures (1984).

Photography

Van Alstine's photographs ask knowing questions about sentiment, perception, and the history of art. Created in the late 1970s early 1980s when Van Alstine was in the western U.S., the Easel Landscape Series was a site-specific installation project designed to question and examine the accepted convention of frame as "signal" or "sanctioning" device for art. The series takes clues from many sources, including the "on site" plein air paintings of Claude Monet, such as the Haystack or Cathedral series, and surrealist René Magritte in paintings like The Promenades of Euclid, where Magritte presents the viewer with the image of a painted canvas on an easel simultaneously in front of a window while acting as a window.

Selected Large Scale Public Works 1982: Trough, Billings, Montana 1986: Solitace Calendar, Austin College, Sherman, Texas 1993: Artery Sunwork, Bethesda, Maryland 2004: 2nd Street Sunwork, Hoboken, New Jersey 2006: Via Solaris, Indiana State University Terre Haute, Indiana 2006–8: Cardinalis, Indianapolis International Airport, Indianapolis, Indiana 2008: Sacandaga Totem, Alexandria, Virginia 2008: Rings of Unity – Circles of Inclusion, 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing, China 2008–10: Funambulist, Michigan State University, Lansing, Michigan 2010–11: Tempered by Memory, Saratoga Springs, New York 2011: Passage, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Public collections

Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, New York Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland Bioethics Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin City of Beijing, China, 2008 Olympic Park Exhibition Collection Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware Denver Art Museum, Gift of List Foundation, New York City Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Washington, D.C. Newark Museum of Art, Newark, New Jersey Museum of Modern Art, Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, New York The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Tsinghua University Museum, Beijing, China US State Department's Art in Embassies Program