ART : Exhibits Show Vision of Sculptor Stephen De Staebler Still Vital and Expansive

Any list of the sacred cows of the San Francisco art world would have to include Stephen De Staebler. He has been on the scene since he earned his master of arts degree at UC Berkeley in 1961, and his sculptures of fragmentary skeletal figures embedded in upright blocks--rather like archeological finds--seem to have been around forever.

That’s precisely why his work needed to be assembled in one place and looked at afresh. Does he essentially turn out the same “trademark” piece over and over, or has he continued to push his art into new directions? An extensive exhibit of De Staebler’s figurative work in clay and bronzes--at the Laguna Art Museum and the Saddleback College Art Gallery through Sept. 10--suggests that his vision has remained remarkably vital and expansive.

The exhibit--which has traveled to San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and two other U.S. locations--is the brainchild of Lynn Gamwell, who used to teach art history at Saddleback (she is now an associate professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton). It comes complete with a rather ponderous catalogue essay by one of America’s leading heavyweight art writers, Donald Kuspit. But the elemental qualities of the sculptures speak for themselves.

Perhaps the most striking thing about De Staebler’s block-encased figures--particularly the female variety--is their similarity to landscape formations. In “Pregnant Woman,” a bronze piece from 1982, the belly rises like a domed rock formation seen from the air. In “Seated Woman With Oval Head,” a bronze from 1981, the figure’s low-slung breasts bring to mind alluvial deposits dragged down by the flow of running water.

De Staebler began making landscape sculpture in the early ‘60s, using the natural slumping and cracking properties of clay. It was an era of dawning public awareness of ecology (Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1962) as well as radical transformations in the clay medium, led by fellow Bay Area artist Peter Voulkos. Rather than turning out traditional, smooth-sided vessels, Voulkos let it bulge and buckle into expressionistic forms.

By the mid-1970s, De Staebler’s sculptural explorations led him to such figurative pieces as “Standing Woman” and “Standing Man,” in which the figures emerge from stacked clay blocks. The stately wedge shapes and severely frontal orientation of these pieces bring to mind the stylization of ancient Egyptian tomb figures, but the eroded, crumbling figures themselves look more like the shattered remains of real people.

Still, there is also a distinctly mystical side to these pieces, created by the easy transitions between recognizable body parts and areas that resemble landscape formations (like the broad delta where the male figure’s missing head should be). In these and other De Staebler pieces, the human figure seems to be at once emerging from and returning to the earth, the medium that gives the body life and receives it in death.

At the same time, seemingly random areas of bright and muted color create an uninhibited, “primitive” effect--a zestfulness that acts as counterpoint to the aura of isolation and muteness that surrounds all of De Staebler’s figures.

If Egypt seems the inspiration for some of the earlier pieces, other works seem closer to ancient Chinese art. In “Blue Torso Column,” from 1984, the figure’s small, oblong head and self-contained, seemingly cloak-wrapped body call to mind certain T’ang Dynasty ceramic figures.

In 1980, the artist began working in bronze, a medium that allowed him to break away from the block and allow a figure to stand on a single long thin leg, often elongated even further by balancing on the tips of the toes.

If De Staebler’s persistent repetition of this stork-like posture sometimes seems excessively mannered, it also has led to some remarkable images. The grandest is “Archangel,” from 1987. This heroic, nearly 10-foot-tall piece consists of a huge wing attached to a reedy torso that thrusts forward in a sweeping convex curve. The artistic lineage of this piece includes the Nike of Samothrace, a famous ancient-Greek representation of the goddess of victory.

The ranks of De Staebler’s winged creatures also include “Winged Woman Walking” and “Right-Sided Angel,” and perhaps even “Standing Figure With Blue Shoulder” (the figure’s uplifted truncated upper arm resembles a wing).

In choosing to emphasize this motif of spiritual uplift, the artist offers an outlook on life that has become quite rare in art of quality. That he is able to pull this off with no loss of power speaks well for the flexibility and durability of his distinctive style.

There is, however, one nagging difficulty with the organization of the show: the seemingly random way the works are divvied up between the two Orange County sites. The net impression is that the Laguna museum got the bigger and more unusual pieces and the modestly sized Saddleback gallery got whatever would fit inside without looking crowded. (Both installations are, happily, on the spare side.)

So, unless you’re a die-hard De Staebler fan, it hardly seems worth the extra drive down to Mission Viejo--a state of affairs that surely demonstrates the college gallery’s need for more spacious quarters.

“Stephen De Staebler: The Figure” remains on view at the Laguna Art Museum and Saddleback College Art Gallery through Sept. 10. The Laguna museum, at 307 Cliff Drive in Laguna Beach, is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is $2 general, $1 for students and seniors. Information: (714) 494-6531. The college gallery, at 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo, is open from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 11 to 3 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free. Information: (714) 582-4924.