Hammerhead III, 1983
Graphite and Charcoal on Paper, 39" x 29 1/2"
Jeff Spaulding was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1947. He received a B.A. from Central Michigan University in 1970 and an M.F.A. in 1974 from Pennsylvania State University. Since the mid-1970s he has received several awards and has exhibited his work at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In his early sculptures and drawings Spaulding explored the energy and movement of objects, including hammers. Around 1984 he began using trees—cedars and firs, which he gathers every summer in the woods of northern Michigan, and discarded Christmas trees—as his primary medium. His recent indoor and outdoor installations of trees probe the subject's primal life force while playing with viewer expectations. Intensely physical in their creation, his organic abstract images also serve as a lyrical metaphor for the human condition.
*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.