Twin Cities sculptors shape public spaces, public perceptions
Mary Abbe, (reprinted from the Star Tribune, Published August 10, 2003 ART10 )

It takes a village to raise a sculpture. Especially the complex public designs that are the specialty of St. Paul artists Stanton Sears and Andrea Myklebust.

Married with a blended family -- she has sons 16 and 12, he has an 11-year-old boy, and they have a daughter of 6 months -- the couple are among the Twin Cities' most visible and productive artists. Their work graces college campuses, town squares and civic plazas throughout the Midwest.

Unlike solo artists bent on self-expression, Myklebust and Sears are consummate collaborators who use art to solve urban problems or to set community histories, aspirations and goals in stone -- or bronze or glass. Trained in art, both also have experience in architecture, a discipline they credit with helping them maintain aesthetic focus when grappling with difficult sites, demanding clients or public officials worried that they might do something controversial.

They're collaborating on 10 projects in various stages of development in Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, North Carolina and Maine. Budgeted at $50,000 to $250,000 each, the projects include sculptural benches for a veterans home, freeway bridge enhancements, a fountain and plaza paving for a restored theater.

"We're sculptors, but I think of us as designers of public and civic spaces," said Myklebust, 36, bouncing daughter Tansy on her lap recently in the spacious, sunlit design studio the couple share in a former billboard factory on University Avenue SE. in Minneapolis.

They live in Minneapolis' Longfellow neighborhood, and Sears, 52, also commutes to Macalester College in St. Paul, where he is an associate professor of art.

"Our media is space and ideas as opposed to stone or glass," Sears said.

Sears and Myklebust often collaborate on projects, but they also have solo gigs. Her $175,000 bronze sculpture of a zaftig woman vaulting through stainless-steel arches atop a pillar was installed last month as the centerpiece of a new $125 million commercial and residential development in St. Louis Park.

His prominent Twin Cities pieces include the 1992 Vietnam Veterans Memorial near the State Capitol in St. Paul, an 11-foot-tall aluminum cutout of a head in LaSalle Plaza in downtown Minneapolis and semicircular stone benches, pillars and plantings on the Macalester campus.

Projects they've worked on together include six inlaid-floor designs at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, a carillon at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, and a tactile and auditory sculpture plaza for the Minnesota School for the Blind and the Physically Handicapped in Faribault, Minn. They also are designing artwork for light-rail train platforms at the airport.

Despite differences in size, materials and purpose, their projects have a certain continuity. Most pieces have a figurative or symbolic element -- often a reference to boats, animals, faces or tools related to the site or its history. Craftsmanship is high-quality and frequently includes carved stone or other hand-worked materials. Function is foremost -- walls double as benches; water-features flow; lighting fixtures glow.

"The big question in public art is, how do you maintain artistic integrity when you're dealing with communities and committees that have questions about subject matter, maintenance, appropriateness and all these issues? I think they've handled that really well," said Jack Becker, executive director of Forecast Public Art, a St. Paul-based consulting group that advises communities on selecting art and artists.

St. Louis Park City Manager Charlie Meyer praised Myklebust's "Spirit of Excelsior."

"This piece of art has no significance on its own; it's only significant in context," Meyer said at the sculpture's installation last month. "We didn't commission a figurative sculpture specifically. We wanted something that spoke to the project, to the sense of community, and it was clear that Andrea got it."

Support staff

Besides an occasional bookkeeper and a part-time office assistant who doubles as "baby wrangler," Myklebust and Sears employ three stone carvers. They have bronze casting done at professional foundries, hire cranes and trucks to deliver and position multiton blocks of limestone and employ engineers, terrazzo workers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers and other professionals as needed.

"We really like to hire farm kids, because they have a great work ethic and usually know how to weld," Sears said, noting that two of the current staff grew up on farms. "They come with a great skill set and have no hesitation about jumping in if you have a big mess."

Working in plastic-sided sheds set up temporarily next to the art building on the Macalester campus, the carvers have spent the past several months working with hand tools and electric grinders on three limestone columns, each weighing 7 tons and standing 10 feet tall. They refer to small scale models marked with grids as they chisel.

Commissioned for an athletic facility at the Rochester Community and Technical College in Rochester, Minn., the columns incorporate abstract references to sports equipment -- the patterns on soccer balls, football lacings, a fragment of a baseball glove.

"The idea was to suggest sports without doing sports figures or making something that looked like a football on a kicking stand," Sears said.

For carvers David Wyrick, Peter Morales and John Topic the job is a rare opportunity to test and develop useful skills for their own work as sculptors.

"I think it's fabulous," Wyrick said. "I've never gotten to work on this scale before, and enlarging from a model has been exciting and challenging."

'Lone genius' not their model

Employing a team to execute art commissions is a time-honored approach rooted in Renaissance and Medieval craft guilds and still embraced by architects and artists who work on large, public commissions. Sears noted, however, that collaboration runs counter to much contemporary art-school education, which typically tries to nurture "lone geniuses" and stresses creativity and social criticism rather than skills.

"For the most part, you end up with people who are neither geniuses nor skilled enough to do other work," he said. "I do have my ego and pride, but I still like to incorporate other people's ideas to make the final thing better, and I like the social responsiblity of trying to improve and build the culture rather than taking pot shots at it."

Referring to the ill-conceived buildings and public spaces that dot the American landscape, Myklebust said, "We live in an environment of disposable architecture. What we do is suggest that not everything should be disposable -- that we should build certain spaces and places carefully and thoughtfully so people can value them over time. That's why we keep on in this goofy business. And because it's fun."

Mary Abbe is at mabbe@startribune.com.