Salthouse
Curator, Richard Rinehart ; Catalog design, Andy Gabrysiak.
Richard Rinehart, Director, Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University.
Description
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Salthouse, January 19 through March 20, 2016, Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University.
Stephen Althouse was raised on a farm in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he earned a working familiarity with the land, animals, and the tools of farming. He went on to work in a stone quarry, on the railroad, and in concrete construction and road building. It comes as no surprise that, when he pursued his artistic studies and practice, he focused on sculpture – on objects and the human hands that make them. Rather than fabricate new objects that would embody his own labor, he chose to work with found objects that told the stories of others, and this contingency remains a key aspect of his work. Photography became an extension of his sculpture, highlighting the flow of time in an object by attempting to fix it in a moment of light and shadow.