DUXBURY — Vermont sculptor Christopher Curtis began his lifelong love affair with rocks and boulders when he was a young child spending summers on top of Mount Mansfield in Stowe, where his ski instructor father managed the Summit House in the off-season. One summer, Curtis filled a glass jar full of the rocks from the driveway to the lodge.
“My mother asked me what I was doing and I said, ‘If it snows, there aren’t going to be any rocks to look at for a whole winter,'” Curtis said. “So I’ve always been kind of nutty for rocks, and still am.”
Curtis, 73, has done far more than look at rocks, he has sliced into them to reveal the secrets they hold inside − often a panoply of swirling textures and colors − and sculpted and polished them into works of art held in private and corporate collections across the United States. His sculptures are owned by corporations and individuals from coast to coast, in Washington, D.C., Boston, Virginia Beach, Little Rock, Las Vegas, New York City, Tulsa, and locations in California and Florida, as well as in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Curtis also sculpts metal, most often stainless steel, frequently combining it with stone to create a compelling synergy between these divergent raw materials. A recent sculpture, a sweeping 24-foot-high arc of stainless steel called That Place in the Stars, is currently being displayed in the expansive field separating the OnLogic building from Interstate 89, where it has garnered a considerable amount of attention.
That Place in the Stars’ home at OnLogic is temporary, and the sculpture will move to an exhibit at Edith Wharton’s historic home in Lenox, Massachusetts, called The Mount, in late May.
‘What about something that’s big enough you could walk through it?’
The sculpture at OnLogic is the second edition of That Place in the Stars. The first edition was made for a collector in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who asked her landscape architect, Jack Arnold, to reach out to Curtis for a sculpture to be placed at the entrance of her home’s formal gardens.
“That happened because I had a solo show at the Tulsa Botanic Garden the previous couple of years, so she knew (my) work,” Curtis said.
Arnold showed Curtis his plans for the entry to the garden, a small, circular area with a couple of benches and a “little tiny sculpture.”
“I said, ‘You know what, what about this, what about something that’s big enough you could walk through it?'” Curtis asked. “He said, ‘Boy, that’s a cool idea.'”
Curtis scaled up the tabletop model he had originally created for That Place in the Stars to a 24-foot-high version that Arnold said would pass muster with the zoning authorities in Tulsa. With a commission in hand, Curtis turned to DMS Machining and Fabricating in Barre to fabricate the sculpture, which was too big for him to build himself in his Duxbury studio.
“They’re top-notch industrial artists, and they can weld anything,” Curtis said of DMS. “But they’re also not in the fine arts. I had to oversee it.”
How a Barre metalworking job shop helped create a work of art
Charlie Atwood owns DMS with his brother Byron. Atwood said DMS is what’s known as a job shop.
“We don’t have an end product, so we build per our customer’s requirements,” he said. “We’re kind of a meat and potatoes shop. We’re not really high tolerance, high precision, not aerospace or anything like that. We do a lot of structural steel. People put up a steel frame building. We’ll go in after them and put in the more finicky stuff, stairs, rails, stuff like that.”
How about 24-foot high stainless steel sculptures without a single straight edge? Done anything like that?
“Not really,” Atwood answered. “Artists are not our clientele.”
Atwood was interested, but hesitant, when he was approached by Curtis “out of the blue” to build That Place in the Stars.
“Most of our clientele give us buildings or structures or things to do that we can put a tape measure to and measure it,” Atwood said. “This is not like that. This is more Chris’ vision and Chris’ eye. I had some concern about working in that relationship.”
But as a job shop where every project is something new, Atwood and his welders love a challenge, so he agreed to take on Curtis’ sculpture.
“At the end of the day, this is fabricating and welding a steel structure,” Atwood said. “We feel that we can pretty much build anything, and this was a challenge to make sure we can build anything.”
The grinding job of meeting a sculptor’s standards
Atwood knew right away who he would give the project to − one of his veteran welders, a matter-of-fact Vermonter named Mark Dessureau.
“He’s talented, he’s finicky, he’s skillful and he’s been around here for a long time, so he’s inventive,” Atwood said of Dessureau.
Dessureau had only Curtis’ small scale model of That Place in the Stars to work with as he figured out how to build a 24-foot-high version of the sculpture.
“He would sit back and look at it,” Dessureau said of Curtis. “He’s the one purchasing it, and he knows what he wants.”
One of the things Curtis wanted was smooth, razor-sharp edges where the stainless steel plates forming the sculpture met, and that meant a great deal of grinding for Dessureau, one of the less enjoyable tasks for the master welder.
Before he even started welding, Dessureau said he spent four days just grinding to create the spaces that would ensure good welds.
“Chris was very concerned that the sharp edges flowed,” Atwood said. “He wanted that corner to be perfectly smooth all the way up.”
Dessureau built both editions of That Place in the Stars − the one in Oklahoma and the one at OnLogic. If there’s another one to be built, Atwood said, Dessureau will do the forming and fitting, but someone else will do the grinding.
“It had good moments and it had bad moments,” Dessureau said of the experience. ” I found out in my life I don’t want to be a sculptor, because sculpture to me is a lot of grinding.”
How to get a 24-foot-high sculpture from Duxbury to Tulsa
One of Curtis’ hallmarks is that he installs his sculptures himself. To that end, he purchased a large, purple, flatbed truck with a remotely operated crane built in − the only way he could possibly manhandle the structural pieces of That Place in the Stars into place before bolting them down.
Once That Place in the Stars was completed by DMS, Curtis had to figure out a way to load it onto his truck for the 1,500-mile drive to Tulsa, where it would be installed in his customer’s private garden.
“Those are tough shapes to grab onto,” Curtis said of the sculpture. “There’s no hard points you can put a strap on, so I had to make these clamps that clamped onto each of those pieces and were balanced enough to be picked up and tilted down and go on (the truck). It had to be precise.”
Working with his publicist, Jane Bradbury, Curtis made a press campaign out of his journey with the sculpture to Tulsa, stopping in six locations along the way to temporarily install That Place in the Stars, the last temporary location being the Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa.
“It was very well received as a sculpture,” Curtis said. “People liked it.”
How a degree in zoology led to a life as one of Vermont’s best sculptors
Curtis, a Stowe native, entered the University of Vermont in the fall of 1969 with something different in mind than becoming a sculptor.
“My degree is in zoology, isn’t that funny?” Curtis said. “The story behind that is I was always interested in science.”
By the second semester of his freshman year, in the spring of 1970, Curtis found himself falling within the gravitational pull of an art professor named Paul Aschenbach. Aschenbach grew up in Randolph, the son of a blacksmith, before attending the Rhode Island School of Design and starting his career as an artist, according to Burlington City Arts. Aschenbach taught sculpture at UVM for 30 years.
“The story was this was the guy you wanted to get with because he was the best instructor,” Curtis said of Aschenbach. “Everyone seemed to agree to that, so much so that his classes were totally booked.”
Only seniors had a shot at getting into Aschenbach’s classes, Curtis said.
“I went to see him and asked if he would make an exception and let me into his class, because I needed to get started,” Curtis remembered. “He said no.”
Curtis kept going back, and on his third try, Aschenbach relented.
“Persistence is very powerful,” Curtis said. “That’s hammered into you over and over again when you’re (sculpting) stone.”
A mentor, a friend, and a source of inspiration
Aschenbach became a mentor and “center of gravity” for Curtis, and many others.
“One of the things he insisted on from students was what he called a broad physical vocabulary,” Curtis said. “He wanted us to know how to do wax, plaster, woodcarving, welding, the most broad sense of skills.”
Aschenbach didn’t teach his students those skills, but left it to them to learn on their own. Curtis’ studio in Duxbury on the banks of Crossett Brook is a testament to just how well Aschenbach’s approach worked, at least for Curtis. There are tools for woodworking, metalworking and stone carving, from an industrial metal lathe to a table saw, a chainsaw, heavy mag drill, metal roller and plasma cutter to cut through steel like butter. Curtis is proficient in all of them.
“The point is he demanded that of us, expected that,” Curtis said. “That was a great thing to have had to learn.”
Curtis’ studio has two floors. The top floor is for woodworking, and for conceptualizing and designing his sculptures, and stays much cleaner than the bottom floor, where the metal grinding and stone cutting goes on. The upper studio is also filled with Curtis’ sculptures.
Just yards from the large picture windows of the upper studio, Crossett Brook thunders over a waterfall, stunningly close and loud from the balcony outside. The site’s first incarnation was as a sawmill in 1820, with the rushing waters of the brook providing power for a waterwheel.
“You can sit outside upstairs, but you can’t sit outside and talk to anybody,” Curtis joked.
Something else that has stuck with Curtis from Aschenbach is that sculpture must be honest.
“What does that mean?” Curtis asked. “You have to think about what it means. It could mean a lot of different things, but fundamentally, it means no tricks, no snazzy stuff.”
In sculpture, the more you take away, the bigger it gets
A corollary to Aschenbach’s demand for honesty was his belief that the more you take away from a sculpture − the more details you remove − the bigger it gets. The bookshelves on the upper floor of Curtis’ studio are filled with lavish photo books of sculptors he admires and loves. One of them, Constantin Brancusi, epitomizes Aschenbach’s call for honesty, in Curtis’ view.
Opening the book to one of Brancusi’s works, an abstract stone sculpture with soft, alluring curves, Curtis studies the photo.
“There’s hardly any details to it, that’s one of his hallmarks,” Curtis finally says. “It’s hard to call that a newborn.”
But it is.
After he graduated from UVM in 1974, Curtis continued his friendship with Aschenbach, at times working at his forge. When Aschenbach died in 1994, his daughter gave Curtis one of his tools, which he still uses.
Discarded shards of glass lead to the creation of That Place in the Stars
The idea for That Place in the Stars came from discarded shards of glass. Curtis and his wife, Tari Swenson, owned the West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park in Stowe for 20 years before selling it in 2018. A sculptor named Paul Schwieder, who works in glass, had a studio in the same building as the gallery, and Curtis knew him well.
“He had this leftover glass he was going to throw away,” Curtis said. “I said, ‘You can’t throw it away,’ so I took a bucket full of shards of glass. But they were not the shapes he wanted, they were the shapes he cut out from the shapes he wanted. A couple of pieces … were curved. I took them out and was fiddling with them. I put them together. All of a sudden it was like, ‘Wow, I see!'”
The basic design of That Place in the Stars, two curves with a three-point stance, was born.
“The point is that idea for that sculpture didn’t come from nowhere, it came from the recognition of, ‘Oh, I like these shapes,'” Curtis said.
Barre art gallery is a mainstay for Curtis’ work over the years
Sue Higby is the executive director of Studio Place Arts, a venerable art gallery in Barre. She has known Curtis for most of the 23 years she has been at Studio Place, and usually has one of his works on display, as she does now − twin stainless steel spires, standing separately but close together, appearing almost molten, their curves are so polished, flowing and smooth.
“It’s very beautiful,” Higby says of the sculpture. “I would think of it as inspired elegance, because if you use the word elegant on its own, it seems kind of cold. I attach the inspired (to) elegance because there’s always a narrative people enjoy understanding when they look at his work. Are those two limbs talking to each other?”
Higby remembers another “interactive” Curtis sculpture that consisted of a small boulder he had found and sliced in two.
“It was interactive because people could walk up to it and separate it,” Higby said. “Either they’re hugging each other or engaged in love, or maybe they were in an argument with their backs to each other. One person came in and said they look like (they’re saying) ‘Follow me.’ Everyone had a different reaction to what he was trying to say with this little slice of stone.”
Higby noted that Curtis had never submitted an artist’s statement to the gallery, despite the many shows he has participated in over the years.
“It says he respects the viewers to arrive at whatever conclusion they wish,” she said.
Floating mobiles of stone startle gallery goers
Curtis’ early pieces for the gallery, which holds an annual stone sculpture show called Rock Solid, were floating mobiles.
“It was startling,” Higby said. “The show is filled with big pieces on the floor and then Chris would bring in these beautifully balanced boulders with a stainless wing. It would sort of circle the space. I think he engages people’s imaginations in a lot of ways. It’s like the difference between a still photograph and a video. Some people can look at a still photo and get a lot from it and some people need to have that movement.”
A local collector with a treasure trove of Curtis sculptures
Perhaps no one’s imagination has been engaged by Curtis more than that of Rick Brokaw, who has Curtis’ sculptures scattered throughout his property in Charlotte. Brokaw first encountered Curtis’ work in his sculpture garden at the Stowe gallery, some 20 years ago.
“A path went off through the woods along a river,” Brokaw remembered. “Walking back there I came to a clearing and here in the clearing were three blades of rock shooting up out of the ground with nothing else around. Wow, such a cool looking thing and a wonderful concept, these rocks blasting out of the ground.”
Brokaw bought the blades of rock and has purchased many more pieces over the years, now on display at his home. Curtis installed most of the sculptures himself, including a large piece reminiscent of That Place in the Stars, which greets visitors to Brokaw’s home as they drive in.
The Two of Us, as the monumental sculpture is called, features Curtis’ familiar twin spires, this time made of Cor-Ten steel, which rusts to certain point, taking on a beautiful orangish hue, but no further, so it will not break down or weaken.
“You should have seen this going up,” Brokaw said. “(Curtis) had his purple truck out here. There’s an access door there where he was cranking it down so it wouldn’t go anywhere.”
Brokaw seems to have the full range of sculptures that have come from Curtis’ imagination − a jagged block of stone with a perfect circle cut out of its middle and polished on the interior surface only; a round rock pierced by a stainless steel shaft, hanging in a tree; a red granite sliver, slithering atop a stone retaining wall; a highly polished black boulder that appears to be covered in fossilized chrysanthemums; a rock shaped like a crescent moon, balanced on a dark, metal lance arcing into the sky; and more.
“Art has to move me in one fashion or another − ‘Wow, cool!'” Brokaw says. “Or I see it and I’m like, ‘Man, I know where that could go.’ But we’ve got a lot. I’ve got a lot. I kind of have a lot by one guy.”
Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosio@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT.
