"Spear" 1991, Black Granite and Fir,22" x 12"x 4"
I once heard the painter Phillip Guston preface a lecture with the statement that he felt that “Anyone who wanted to hear an artist talk about his own work probably just needed glasses”. If you are looking into the work, rather than looking at it, if you are being touched in some way by it, then I don’t think I can explain much about that or that anything I would say would help much to inform your experience. So this letter in a bottle, to you who are interested enough to read this is more about my process and considerations, my inspirations and influences than my results.
I operate on a foundation of all that was done before me, all of our efforts to try and do this right. I watch everything and ideas seem to percolate through it all. I’m on the lookout for and seem to be sensitive to imagery and ideas that somehow resonate with my particular aesthetic, my personal sense of beauty and harmony. I’ll see things and get inspiration for what and how to bring something into realization. My part in the choir.
Once I have an idea, I seem to subconsciously decide which medium to use; the idea usually includes the method. I use a lot of different materials and processes which I don’t believe are incompatible in my body of work.
"Lobby Floor for the Myrna Loy Theatre,
Helena Montana" 1991,
Slate, Semi-precious Stones and Fossils 1200 sq.ft.
My strategies and tactics vary but once I find the right, efficient and effective way to work on a piece, I have a determination to get it to that clear, clean and elegant place where it “works “ in my mind, meets a criterion of mine. Along the way, I seem to befriend the work, develop a sort of Pygmalion and Galatea , horse and rider relationship with this developing thing from my mind but now external to it. Once in a while, if I’m lucky, I seem to fall in love with the pieces, they work for me and I know when they are finished. Once they are done, it’s like having a litter of puppies: you love them all and they are so cute, but you know the consequences of keeping them all and want to find them good homes. They really are complete when they find their place in the world.
I feel remarkably fortunate to be an artist.
"Spiral" 1992, Various Stone Tiles and Ammonite Fossil
Part of Large Floor and Mural, Mendenhall Labs O.S.U. Columbus Ohio
Artist’s Biography
David Culver was born in Ames Iowa February 9th, 1951. He grew up in Iowa and Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota (1969-1970), Kent State College (1970), and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1971-1974) where he studied under Siah Armajani and encountered and studied with Joseph Beuys, Robert Morris, Roman Polanski, Louise Nevelson, Shinkichi Tajiri, among others as visiting artists and instructors.
After leaving MCAD, Culver worked at a variety of jobs including logger, sheep shearer, quarryman, roofer, stone mason, sign painter and chimney sweep all in western Montana.
His first big commission came in 1990 when he was chosen to create and install the Lobby floor for the Myrna Loy Center for Performing Arts in Helena Montana out of native slate; followed by a series of other public art commissions.
Culver continues to work in a variety of mediums and resides in Bay City Wisconsin in a renovated Post Office on the Mississippi River.
"Bench" 1995, Black Granite , 24" x 18" x 48"
David Culver culverstone@gmail.com
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See David's work in person at the A\Work Gallery
4328 Farragut Street, Hyattsville, MD 20781
opening reception on Saturday, May 7, from 5 – 8 p.m.
