STEPHEN ALTHOUSE
METAPHERN DER MENSCHLICHKEIT – METAPHORS OF HUMANITY
June 14 through October 6, 2018

After spending thirty years as an artist and university professor of fine arts in Miami, Florida, Stephen Althouse (who himself has European roots) now lives and works back in rural Pennsylvania where he grew up and which inspired him artistically. Stephen Althouse’s training is actually that of a sculptor, but in fact he works mainly with the medium of photography. His path from sculpting to photography is coherent and compelling, which is reflected in his extensive international exhibition biography and numerous awards he has received.

Starting with simple materials such as wood, iron or leather, which he combines into sculptures, followed by montages of found objects to the depiction of isolated and arranged things in photography, his work always deals with objects of simple life, the rural culture and agriculture with which the artist was familiar in his childhood. Within his work he poses the fundamental questions of human existence, of life and work, of war and death. It is the modest, the humble things that fascinate the artist – the basic and pure materials, raw wood, simple metal or leather, coarse linen fabrics, primitive equipment, old tools, their banal design that has developed over centuries from their functionality the unadorned surfaces that bear traces of use. They all tell a story that may remain hidden but is clearly perceptible. The artist brings these stories into our time, connects them with others and tells new ones. This process of transformation is also reflected in the methodology of his artistic practice, which is also about transformation. Objects are taken of their original context and isolated, combined with others, altered and expanded, transferred by photography from their real being into a digital form, processed again, and finally charged with new content as an autonomous work of art in a museum context, to no longer represent merely themselves.

The power of these works is huge and impressive. In the large scale, the archaic quality of the objects and their state of quiescence have quite an overwhelming effect. A minimalist concept, deep black tonality, simple compositions of few objects depicted with restraint and attention to lighting, as well as masterly photographs and particularly high-quality prints lead to unique and unmistakable imagery. Althouse’s works are in a distinctive language and a deeply moving mystical spiritual dimension which penetrates into our subconscious and elicits a response from our innermost being. They give us the feeling of standing in a long tradition, of being links in an infinite chain; at the same time they confront us with our own mortality.

Stephen Althouse is a traveller who has visited foreign countries and cultures throughout his life in order to meet people and to gather impressions, which have also become artistically significant. He has often stayed in Europe, lived in Belgium over a longer period and worked there as a lecturer and artist. He contacted us during a study trip to Klagenfurt. This visit with the stimulating conversations and the Museum‘s enthusiasm for Althouse‘s work, has resulted not only in a fruitful collaboration, but also in the generous donation of two photographic works, now integrated into our collection. We greatly appreciate these works which were exhibited last year in an exhibition of the collection. Sincere appreciation to the artist and to the donor of his works, Rolf Rehe of Vienna.

Christine Wetzlinger-Grundnig, Director
Museum Moderner Kunst Kärnten, Klagenfurt, Austria

STEPHEN ALTHOUSE
PERSONAL SYMBOLS, PRIVATE TOTEMS
May 28 through October 5, 2014

The black and white photography of artist Stephen Althouse – doubly obsolete in its dimension as material support and as a vehicle of artisanal skills – brings to the foreground the question whether, and to what extent, an antimodernist impulse is operative here – one that could best be compared to the lineage of Giogio de Chirico in painting. It is an antimodernism that greets the present through the lens of melancholia that is manifestly disconnected from the model of an avant-garde and its necessary link with advancing scientific and technological means of production, and that positions itself with regard to the question of the reconstruction of memory under the conditions of loss – a question that is important in this postwar period.

George S. Bolge, Chief Executive Officer
Museum of Art-DeLand, Florida

STEPHEN ALTHOUSE

The Tools

December 16, 2012 through May 12, 2013

The exhibition Stephen Althouse – Die Waerkzeichen (Pennsylvania German: The Tools) represents selected photographic works created by the artist during the past eight years. Althouse’s powerful imagery may be experienced on many levels; from the purely visual to the profoundly conceptual, from the intellectual to the emotional and spiritual. On the surface, his large-scale works are exquisitely printed and carefully organized minimalist compositions of ordinary tools and artifacts bursting with texture and minute detail. Looking deeper we find that Althouse depicts objects and implements that seem to reference and blend aspects of human activity across time, his rural Pennsylvania upbringing, Quaker influences, and his present life in a predominantly Amish community. In many of his images Althouse incorporates pieces of white cloth, elements in contrast to his other subjects of dark aged metal, wood, and leather, and which take his works to another level eliciting a sense of reverence and spirituality.

As one delves into the life of the artist, it becomes apparent that his images are strongly interconnected with his personal life and varied past and present experiences, and make unique correlations with his questions and views about humanity. As indicators suggesting the profundity of Althouse’s art, undecipherable words and phrases are subtly incorporated into some of his pieces, which are enigmatic clues of his thoughts and ideas at the time. His phrases are often encrypted in Braille, and in languages such as Latin, medieval German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Walloon, and Zapotec that are not utilized by mainstream societies yet somehow have personal significance to the artist. Throughout his works, in his own visual language of personal symbols and metaphors, Althouse renders his views of humankind and his own life as a gradient melding of positive and negative attributes and experiences. The results are inimitable and unforgettable images charged with mystery and spirituality, which may serve as catalysts for varied interpretations by the viewers of his artwork.

Stephen Althouse was raised in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and later spent considerable time travelling and living abroad. He holds a lifetime rank of Distinguished Professor of Fine Art at Barry University in Miami, Florida and also regularly taught courses in France, England, Spain, and Ecuador. He has now relocated back to Pennsylvania and works creatively in Centre County.

The Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania
Dr. Diane Fischer, Chief Curator

STEPHEN ALTHOUSE
TOOLS and SHROUDS
September 9 – November 8, 2009

From the earliest days of photography, the pictorial documentation of the world around us has held infinite fascination as the subject for photographers. And from the beginning, the photographic image was as influential as the printed word. Even today, when we look at a photograph, we tend to “read” the image for its informational content. Stephen Althouse’s images can be read as metaphors for the interconnectedness of secular and spiritual life. His images combine the practical and symbolic, weaving a relationship between tools and textiles as venerated symbols of work and faith. Like medieval devotional relics and honorific textiles, Althouse’s tools and shrouds become symbols of power and reverence, engaging the viewer in a dialogue about history, humanity, tradition and spirituality.

Born in Washington DC in 1948, Althouse grew up in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he trained as a sculptor. The product of a Quaker education, Althouse received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, and studied sculpture at Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia. The sculptural tradition of making and manipulating subject matter is carried over in his photography, and is further explored in these enigmatic and powerful images. For 30 years, Althouse lived in Miami where he was a Professor of Fine Art at Barry University, before returning to central Pennsylvania, where he lives and works creatively today.

This exhibition presents Stephen Althouse’s most recent work as well as a series of powerful images which the artist created in 2003 and 2004 while serving as artist-in residence at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Liège, Belgium, through a Fulbright Research Fellowship.

The Museum is pleased to share this exhibition and publication with a larger audience in both Canada and Germany. We feel it is important to show Stephen Althouse’s recent work and to create a scholarly catalogue that amplifies our understanding of his compelling images. For their very generous support of this publication, we thank Lawrence D. and Lucienne Lefebvre Glaubinger of The Glaubinger Foundation. We thank Dr. Eugene W. Metcalf, Jr. and Dr. Mark McPhail for their perceptive essay which constitutes a significant contribution to this publication. For their presentation of concurrent exhibitions of Stephen Althouse’s photography, we thank Jacqueline Hébert Stoneberger of Beaux-arts des Amériques in Montréal, and Werner Ruhnke of Galerie Ruhnke, Potsdam, outside Berlin, Germany. Lastly, we extend our heartfelt thanks to the Museum’s trustees and donors, who have demonstrated their commitment to the Museum in their support of the Museum’s ambitious and internationally-recognized exhibition program.

W E N D Y M . B L A Z I E R
Senior Curator, Boca Raton Museum of Art

STEPHEN ALTHOUSE
The Art Museum of Miami University
February 15 – March 28, 2006

The photographs of Stephen Althouse transform familiar objects into symbols of human experience and spiritual striving. Through his poetic images of old and outworn artifacts, he makes visible that which we often fail to see — the intimate and intricate beauty and meaning of everyday things.

In Althouse’s photography, old and derelict refugees of his and our past evoke new mysteries. Wrapped, bound, or shrouded in white cloth, many of his objects create a dialogue between freedom and constraint, flight and imprisonment, death and resurrection. Often featuring objects like saws, chisels and wrenches, Althouse’s images also serve as monuments to human labor and the significance and value of work. Whether depicting the sinuous leather straps of an old bridle or the well-scrubbed ridges of an ancient wooden washboard, the images of Althouse’s artifacts become powerful visual metaphors for the lives of the people who have used them.

Through his unique command of extreme photographic detail, Althouse reveals the worn and scarred surfaces of his artifacts, the presence of generations of hands that have held them, and references the timeless untold challenges and struggles of common people confronting their daily tasks.

The magic of Althouse’s images begins with his discovery of objects that, for him, seem to embody some special sense of memory, mystery, or enchantment. Recapturing his found subjects through the process of photography, he enshrines them in large-scale, minimalist compositions that transcend the ordinary and turn the everyday into the epic. The power and drama of Althouse’s images also arise from the unique photographic method that he has developed to produce his black and white inkjet prints. Combining both traditional and digital photographic technologies, he creates an interplay of light, shadow and contrast to render his subjects in mesmerizing detail against a palette of glowing whites and velvety blacks.

Joanne Cubbs, Dr. Mark McPhail, Dr. Gene Metcalf, Art Critics and Curators, Oxford, Ohio

Silver Eye Center for Photography
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

– TOOLS and SHROUDS –
by STEPHEN ALTHOUSE
May 11- June 4, 2005

The exhibited images by Miami artist Stephen Althouse represent a portion of a series created during his 2003-2004 residency in Belgium. He was the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship to create new photographic-digital artwork as an artist-in-residence in Belgium, hosted by the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Liège. In conjunction with the Fulbright Fellowship, he was also awarded grants from Epson-Seiko Digital Printers and Hahnemühle Digital Fine Art Papers of Germany.

As an adolescent growing up in the farmlands of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Stephen Althouse developed a deep appreciation for the honest, simple, and solid relationships formed between the working people and their land, their animals, their tools, the seasons, and the passage of time. He also witnessed the economic uncertainties of the neighboring county as its steel and coal industry gradually weakened and died. He received Quaker, Moravian and Mennonite schooling which encouraged the development of deep personal and private spirituality. Although he has lived in cosmopolitan Miami for almost 30 years and is involved in frequent international travel, the influences of his rural childhood continue to surface in his artwork.

While residing and creating art in the Wallon (French speaking) region of Belgium he found that this was not only an experience in a different country, but for him it seemed like a revisit back to a different time period of his life. Living in a small town surrounded by farmland, and being close to an industrial steel manufacturing city in serious economic decline, Althouse was constantly reminded of his childhood. The similarities of the environment and the values, mannerisms, and friendliness of his Belgian acquaintances with those of his Pennsylvania upbringing are apparent influences upon the creation of his recent art. His fascination with tools and implements, and the patinas and textures which relate to their histories are evident throughout the works in this exhibition. Althouse’s images involve mystery and spirituality through his usage of metaphoric symbols to create a poetic visual language which is not possible, nor intended to be interpreted literally. Latin phrases written in Braille deliberately add to the indecipherable quality of his work.

Although he uses photography as his primary creative medium, Althouse’s background is also in sculpture, and the sculptural practice of modifying and manipulating subject matter is carried over to his creation of photographic imagery. He arranges personally symbolic objects into assemblages which visually express his ideas and emotions. He photographs his assemblages using 4×5 inch black and white sheet film. After scanning his negatives, he digitally manipulates and adds subtle elements to his images before making his finished digital print. Having expertise in traditional darkroom printing, Althouse is now recognized in the field for his ability to produce exquisitely rich and highly stable large-scale digital black and white inkjet prints, as is evident by his international grants supporting the development and refinement of his fine art digital printing techniques.

Stephen Althouse is the Chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Barry University, Miami, Florida where he holds a faculty position as Professor of Photography. He frequently lectures on his photographic imagery and teaches in Paris, London, Madrid, and Ecuador. His artwork is being acquisitioned into the major museum collections of North America, Europe, and South America.

STEPHEN ALTHOUSE
WAR
Gallery of Art, Barry University, Miami, Florida
October 12 – November 25, 2001

It may be said that contemporary Western art is a reflection of our society, sometimes as documentation, sometimes as approval, sometimes as criticism, and sometimes as concern. This retrospective exhibition of photographic images by Stephen Althouse has been curated in response to the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001. In the selection and narrowing process for this exhibition, images were chosen which illustrate the recurrence of specific elements that permeate much of Althouse’s work. Weapons, both primitive (Amazonian blowgun darts, stone implements) and sophisticated (stealth bomber), have been symbols utilized by the artist since the late 1960’s not as advocacy of violence but, after one knows the background of the artist, just the opposite. Raised in rural Pennsylvania, Althouse contemplated Quaker influences in his early twenties and late teenage years during the Vietnam War, which at that time was a vague and misunderstood major military campaign radically affecting his generation, the politics of that era, and the established social order.

Privately expressing his concern for humankind and our historic inability to recognize the early signs which prohibit us from diagnosing societal problems before they reach the extreme and epidemic, Althouse is not without hope. Under a shrouded medieval helmet he inscribes in Braille the Latin words, “occurrent nubes”, translated as, “clouds (heaven) will intervene.” If it may be said that contemporary Western art is a reflection of our society, then it could also be said that the artwork of Stephen Althouse is a metaphoric mirror of prophecy in the context of the recent terrorist attack upon our nation. In his large-scale photograph, Shrouded Swords, dating to 1999, he encrypts a Braille phrase in the center of his piece, “veniente occurrite morbo” meaning, “meet the coming of the disease.”

A characteristic of photography is its ability to communicate precisely detailed information, and Althouse’s earlier works are rich with extremely fine detail. However, in his latest series he chooses to obscure and camouflage that information through the covering of subject matter with cloth. Detail is concealed further by employing exaggerated photographic grain whose texture is reminiscent of his earlier works done in sand. Secrecy is heightened in his imagery by integrating Braille phrases into his compositions, adding a profound and mysterious quality to his work.

Dart, 2001
Mask VI, 1999
Mask VII, 1999
Mask III, 1997 
Mask IV, 1997
Mask V, 1997 
Berlin, 1997
Swords, 1997
Spears, 1997
Standing Armor, 1995
Darts II, 1994
Ubi Lapsus, 1993
Darts I, 1989 
Blades II, 1989
Goodbye II, 1988 
Blades I, 1985
Papyrus, 1984
Shrouded Stealth Bomber, 1999
Hex Nuts and Wrenches, 1999
Shrouded Swords, 1999
Shrouded Gauntlet, 1999
Shrouded Helmet, 1999
Gauntlets, 1994

– The SHROUDS of STEPHEN ALTHOUSE –
Atrium Gallery of Art at St. Thomas University, Miami, Florida
April 19 – May 18, 2001

Artist Stephen Althouse was born in Washington, DC in 1948, raised in rural Pennsylvania, and supplemented his education with foreign study in South America. He resides in Miami, where he holds a faculty position in the Department of Fine Arts at Barry University, and periodically teaches in France, England, Spain, and South America.

Although he uses photography as his primary creative medium, Althouse is also a sculptor and the sculptural tradition of making and manipulating subject matter is carried over into his photography. His images appear to be ritualistic in nature, often cryptically blending mysteries of passage from his youth and adulthood, experiences during his travels, and emotional reactions to people and events which have impacted upon his life.

In covering his subjects in shrouds, Althouse seems to be withholding information, dropping clues and raising questions; thereby pushing the drama and mystery of his works to uncharted levels. Phrases written in Braille, which have been important elements in many of his works since the late 1960’s, add to the indecipherable quality of Althouse’s art. Braille additionally implies blindness, reflecting his view of human existence, “that of groping and stumbling throughout history”. He states that blindness also describes his state of mind whenever he feels the absence of creativity.

Althouse is experimenting with photographic film grain incorporated into his images, exaggerated by large-scale printing, film development, and point source illumination in the darkroom. Two of the pieces in this exhibition, The Five Talents and Dart, are technical departures and representative of a series of his most current work created entirely on the computer. Using neither camera nor film for these two examples, Althouse places his subjects directly upon a scanner to capture his images digitally.

The crossover between his use of photography and digital imaging is consistent and fluid and his pieces continue to be highly creative and personal, with their meanings “shrouded” in mystery.

Jorge Sardinas, Director
Atrium Gallery of Art at St. Thomas University

Dart, 2001
The Five Talents, 2000
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and Shroud, 1999
Shrouded Gauntlet, 1999
Shrouded Wrench, 1999
Wrapped Ribs, 1999
Mask VI, 1999
Mask VII, 1999
Shrouded Stealth Bomber, 1999
Crown of Small Flowers, 1999
Shrouded Swords, 1999
Shrouded Helmet, 1999
Hex Nuts and Wrenches, 1999
Gauntlets, 1994