Guggenheim Winners

by Chris Cumo

Steve Keister

An abstract sculptor, Guggenheim winner Steve Keister has
immersed his art in the geometric shapes of antiquity. While
a junior at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, he spent
1969 in Rome, where he reveled in the solemn grandeur of the
relics of a once formidable empire.

“It was heaven on earth,” he says.

Keister absorbed the layers of Etruscan, Greek and Roman
art that form the mosaic of ancient Italian art. For much
of his career, Keister has sculpted in the tradition of Western
art, describing his work as “the dynamic composition characteristic
of the West.”

Returning to Tyler from Italy, Keister completed a B.F.A.
in 1971 and earned an M.F.A. in 1973. He left Philadelphia
for New York City, finding work as a sales clerk at the Whitney
Museum of American Art. Then, as now, jobs were not plentiful
for artists, and Keister considers himself fortunate to have
worked at the Whitney, where he absorbed its collection of
contemporary American art.

With an eclectic mix of ancient Italian and modern American
art as his heritage, Keister launched a meteoric career, beginning
to exhibit his sculptures while in his late 20s. In 1977,
he had his first solo show in Chicago, where he exhibited
a collection of small abstract sculptures. The next year he
had a solo exhibit in New York City.

“My work sold,” he says, “and everything began to move really
fast.”

In 1981 he launched a solo show at the prestigious BlumHelman
Gallery on 57th Street in New York City. That year he also
exhibited his sculptures at the Whitney Biennial Show, perhaps
the premiere showcase of young artists.

He traces his interest in art to childhood, to his mother’s
encouragement. In high school he won national scholastic arts
prizes. As a graduate student at Tyler, he began painting
realistically, but he jettisoned realism for abstraction when
he moved to New York City.

His fascination with Western abstract art, however, ebbed
with his discovery of pre-Colombian art, which is now the
major influence on his work. Every year since 1979 he has
visited the Aztec ruins in Mexico and the Mayan art in the
jungles of Central America.

“I always try to go to different archaeological sites and
a beach,” he says, “but I always end up going also to an island
near Cancun–Islamujeres–my favorite site.”

He has visited Tikal and Ceibal in Guatemala, and Chiapas
in Mexico. His sculptures now take on the visage of Aztec
and Mayan terra-cotta masks. They have a primal grandeur,
an elemental necessity. Pre-Colombian art has given Keister
“a new vocabulary of symbols.” The rounded corners of Aztec
and Mayan art correspond to the shape of Styrofoam packaging,
giving him a new medium for his sculptures.

“I’m intrigued by the way Mayan art and architecture emphasize
art and spirituality and render it in a sort of abstract,
yet geometrical form,” he says. “Their visual designs are
indigenous, so unified, because they were developed in isolation
from other civilizations.”

Along the way he earned a living as a construction worker
and an installer of ceramic tile. In 1989 he supplemented
this income by teaching as an adjunct at the School of Visual
Arts in New York City. In 1997 he began teaching at Hofstra
University, and two years later at the Maryland Institute
College of Art.

As an adjunct, Keister is a bit of an iconoclast. He does
not resent what others term the low pay of part-time teaching.
Instead he considers it good money for work that is far less
strenuous than construction. He also likes being an adjunct
because the job makes fewer demands on him than on full-time
faculty. He does not attend faculty meetings and is exempt
from the drudgery of committee meetings.

Unlike many college faculty, Keister favors the abolition
of tenure, which, in his view, leads to lethargy and complacency.
He enjoys working with graduate students, who stimulate his
intellect and challenge him to remain current in his field.
In return, he challenges students to think for themselves,
to overturn conventions, to defy the prevailing notions of
what is art.

Keister’s art has raked in several awards. In 1986 he won
the (Jackson) Pollack-Krasner Fellowship and two years later
a National Endowment for the Arts grant. In 1999 he won a
$20,000 Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation fellowship.

This year he and his wife, Jill Levine, have each won a $34,000
Guggenheim stipend, the first time in the award’s history
that a husband and wife have simultaneously won Guggenheims
in the same year and in the same category.

“The joy of winning a Guggenheim has been indescribable,”
he says. The award will allow both Keister and Levine to “concentrate
more on our art,” he says. “That will be a real luxury for
us both.” But as nice as they are, the awards are merely accoutrements.
“The pursuit of art is the real thing,” he says.

Now 51, Keister can look back with pride on a long career.
He has endured times when his art sold poorly and he felt
discouraged. But the past does not entice Keister as powerfully
as does the promise of the future.

“I keep wanting to re-experience an epiphany,” he says. “Discovery
is where reality lies. If the experience of discovery is true
enough, it will always carry its own force.”

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about three other Guggenheim winners 2
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