Robert Stackhouse to be Exhibited at Polk Museum of Art

Written by Christian Balog Friday, 28 January 2011 23:07

 

LAKELAND, FL – Robert Stackhouse, 1960 graduate of Auburndale High School, will have his work exhibited at Polk Museum of Art starting December 1. Robert Stackhouse: Swimmers & Floaters will feature images of snakes and boats, two things that influenced him during his teen years on Lake Juliana.

“Stackhouse is a nationally and internationally recognized artist,” said Daniel E. Stetson, Executive Director of Polk Museum of Art, “This is a local boy who went off and made his name in the art world, so bringing his work here is like a full circle from inspiration to presentation.”

“Robert Stackhouse is the most widely respected visual artist to have called Polk County home,” said Todd Behrens, Curator of Art. “His work is full of amazing technical skill, so you can appreciate it on that level, but it also reveals the story of how childhood experiences can shape our lives and the way we define and understand ourselves. Stackhouse has taken his experiences on the lakes of Polk County into the realm of fine art.”

Swimmers and Floaters refers to the snakes and boats featured in much of Stackhouse’s work, both of which embedded themselves in his consciousness during his teen years on Lake Juliana in Auburndale. This thirty-year retrospective, organized by Polk Museum of Art from the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, traces the roots of some of Stackhouse’s most widely known imagery—boats and snakes—to his formative years in Polk County. The snakes and boats of his youth have taken on mythic importance and increased psychological power as Stackhouse has refined these images over the years.

Among the more imposing works included in the exhibition are the 40’ long Great Rain Snake sculpture made of oak and Dragon Fight, a 16’-wide watercolor painting featuring an image of a Viking ship overlaying an enormous serpent. Stackhouse has become acclaimed for his sculptures, paintings and prints, examples of which are included in this exhibition.

Stackhouse was born in Bronxville, New York in 1942, but moved to Polk County in 1954 to live with his grandparents. He lived at Lundy’s Fish Camp in Auburndale, graduating from Auburndale High School in 1960. Summers and evenings after school were spent on Lake Juliana, hunting, fishing, rowing his boat, and watching for alligators, water moccasins and cottonmouth snakes. After receiving his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of South Florida in 1965—as part of the first graduating class of art students at the school—and his Master’s Degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1967, he began teaching at the Corcoran Gallery School of Art in Washington DC.

Stackhouse quickly achieved a reputation as an important young sculptor and rose to national prominence after his one-man show at Max Hutchinson’s Sculpture Now Gallery, in New York in 1976. During his career, he has been honored with more than seventy one-person exhibitions. He has served as a visiting artist and professor of art at colleges, universities, and art schools across North America including the Cleveland Institute of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Art Gallery of Toronto. He has installed more than thirty permanent displays of his work in outdoor and indoor venues across the country and in Australia. His work has been collected by prestigious museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Robert Stackhouse: Swimmers & Floaters will be on display December 1, 2007 – March 2, 2008. An Opening Celebration Reception will be held November 30. Stackhouse will attend and will present a lecture about his work at 6:00pm, with the reception to follow at 7:00pm. The lecture and reception are free for Museum members and $10 for non-members.

Polk Museum of Art is located in Lakeland, Florida. The Museum is a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts in Central Florida. The Museum is one of the top ten art museums in the state of Florida and the only art museum accredited by the American Association of Museums serving the 530,000 residents of Polk County. For more information about the exhibition or reception, please call 863-688-7743 or visit www.PolkMuseumofArt.org .

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