Sculptor Stephen De Staebler approached the monotype process in much the same way he develops his sculptures. The figure, which resonates as a central motif in much of his work, appears as well in his monotypes. Here De Staebler constructs his figures by stacking together layers of tape and shards of broken Plexiglas which had been scoured and scratched, inking them and running them through the press multiple times. The juxtaposing of oddly-shaped pieces created a jigsaw puzzle that evoked a torso, limbs, a head.
As his residency progressed, De Staebler became increasingly more comfortable with the painted medium. Now using large-scale Plexiglas plates, De Staebler sprinkled raw pigments over wet ink applications on his matrix. He passed each plate multiple times allowing “ghost” images and primary passes to alternate, sometimes incorporating textures of tape and other elements he applied to the plate surface. This process produced monotypes with complex imagery, affording great depth to each of his prints.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Berkeley Art Museum; Brunnier Art Museum, Iowa State University, Ames, IA; Ceramics Research Center, Arizona State University Art Museum, Scottsdale, AZ; Contemporary Art Museum, Honolulu, HI; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; di Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA; Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN; Fresno Art Museum, CA; Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MacNider Art Museum, Mason City, IA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC; Moores School of Music, University of Houston, TX; Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York; New Britain Museum of American Art, CT; New Orleans Museum of Art; Oakland Museum of California; Palm Springs Art Museum, CA; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Runnymede Sculpture Park, Woodside, CA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art; California Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden; University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, IN: Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library, Topeka, KS; Utah Museum of Art, Salt Lake City, UT
