Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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John Van Alstine, Kouros, 1989
granite and vise
103 x 29 x 22 in

John Van Alstine was born in Johnstown, New York, in 1952. Before moving his studio to the Adirondacks, he lived in New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Wyoming. In 1970-71 he attended St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, and in 1973 the Blossom Festival School in Cleveland-Kent, Ohio. He received a B.F.A. in sculpture, ceramics, and glass from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, in 1974 and an M.F.A. from Cornell University in 1976. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Japan, and his work can be found in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Denver Art Museum. He has received several awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1986 and two New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships in 1984 and 1988. His large welded-steel, cast-bronze, and carved-granite sculptures as well as his charcoal and pastel drawings, celebrate raw dynamism and precarious balance. His rugged primary forms reflect aspects of Minimalism and process art, yet his sense of materiality and his use of found tools and objects reflect a strong poetic urge, as well as an interest in astronomy, physical science, geology, archaeology, and art history.