Argus-Leader from Sioux Falls, South Dakota • Page 23

1C Argus-Leader, Sioux Falls, S.D. Friday, March 17, 1978 4 A i Carver Koehler breaks through By MARSHALL FINE Argus-Leader Stall Writer It seems fitting that Paul John Koehler's sculpture. "Colorado Infinito." should win the "Best Sculpture" and "Best of Show" awards in the first CollegeUniversity Art Faculties Exhibition. The carving, in creamy Colorado alabaster, represented the completion of an evolution in Koehler's style, one he could feel as he finished the sculpture. The prizes were a nod of approval, but one Koehler did not require to know that something had happened to his work.

"During the carving, I sensed that something pretty dramatic was going on," Koehler said in his Augustana College studio, where he teaches sculpture. "That particular stone was a breakthrough, as far as my work's evolution. "What I had been doing for years was using a figurative exploration of volumetric relations. Now I've purged the figurative element from my work and am dealing exclusively with form. "I've been carving since 1964 or 1965.

I'd done dozens of pieces with the mother-child theme. Now I've purged that from my style. It's only in the last, couple of years that I've done it; it's taken me years to do. "It's just been a natural evolution. The figurative element has been like a crutch: You lean on it, it's easy.

With each successive piece I've done, I've eliminated a piece of that crutch until it's gone." That evolution began while Koehler was studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree at State University of New York. Until that time, he had been a design major, but "I wasn't comfortable; I wanted to be somewhere else." A sculptor, for whom Koehler was student teaching, gave Koehler a piece of stone to carve, because the sculptor at the time was carving wood. "I've experienced most of the alternatives in terms of dealing with articulated mass and space," he said. "I feel most comfortable carving. Everybody has a certain rhythm.

Mine is compatible with carving. I find it exhilarating to define a form using the reductive process, cutting away instead of building up." While some sculptors make models of the sculptures before putting chisel to stone, Koehler prefers direct carving: Chipping and scoring the stone until the art in the piece emerges. "You just carve- until it feels right," he said. "What takes the longest time is getting your head in the right place, spend-' ing time with the stone before you begin carving. You just know when you're done.

All of a sudden, something switches on in your head that says, it's finished. "You can look at other people's work and think that it's not resolved. But the individual who carved it will say, 'To me, it's It's a personal thing. "You have to experience the transformation of any type of material to understand when it's finished. It's not like a formula, where you can plug in an equation and get an answer." Before coming to Augustana, Koehler earned his living as a teacher and sculptor, finding success and frustration.

"I had a period where I was red hot," he said. "I was selling enough to live on and to put a few bucks in the bank. It is possible to support yourself as a sculptor, but it's difficult. It's like a big clam; it opens up wide, then it slams shut. "I went through a period where I was turning out some very bad stuff.

I was forcing the issue on how to deal with my materials. I was being very arbitrary and analytical and I turned out nothing but trash. But I worked through that. Some people get so discouraged that they give it up. I kept atit and worked through it." Koehler's "Colorado Infinito" Varied talents displayed locally If your curiosity about area artists has been piqued by the various exhibits hanging in normally non-art-bearing sites this month, two local shows should be of particular interest.

The CollegeUniversity Art Faculties Exhibition, now on view at the Civic Fine Arts Center, represents the first attempt by the March Arts Festival to bring together the works of art pedagogues at South Dakota schools and those of surrounding states. It is a show of variety and versatility, encompassing forms as diverse as Paul John Koehler's obliquely sensuous style in the sculpture, "Colorado Infinito" and Mel Spinar's rough-edged realism in his painting, "Bill." "Colorado Infinito" is one of Koehler's two pieces in the show; it was named Best Sculpture and Best of Show. It carries a sense of flow and continuity, doubling back on itself like a tiny mountain road. Its grace and seeming lightness are incongruous with the stone's apparent weight; Koehler has given the work a feeling of spinning in space, combined with a tranquility that borders on coolness. Review By contrast, Robert Cocke's oil, "Window No.

7," judged Best Painting of the show, is a study in the unease and even terror of what appears to be a mundane scene. Cocke laces the realism of the picture (an ashtray filled with butts in front of a window which looks out on a sunny yard) with traces of expressionism. His use of color and light in outlining the outdoor scene within the picture speaks of a world that is fraying around the edges, even slowly falling apart as the unseen smoker contemplates the view from his window. "My Grandma's Vase," a color lithograph by Carl Grupp which was named Best Graphic of the show, is an intricate picture with a feeling of earthiness in its detail. What at first appears to be a picture of an overloaded vase takes on new dimensions when one notices the aging doll sitting next to it, or the grasshoppers and bees that perch and fly between the stems within the vase.

The rest of the show is almost equally interesting, from the contradictory warmth and destructiveness of Edward Evans' acrylic, "Lower Inferno," to the surreal humor of colliding airborne glass jars in Steve Garner's "Kerr-ash," to the eerie pink death mask, with pearls for teeth, of Jay Olson's oil, "My Self Portrait is Your Self Portrait." At the Eide-Dalrymple Gallery in Augustana's Old Main, Augustana and Sioux Falls College students have a joint show on display, also as part of the March Arts Festival. Student shows are, as a rule, uneven, displaying differing degrees of Is t. tosses- Carver Paul John Koehler scores a piece of Colorado alabaster in his Augustana College studio. (Photo by Lloyd B. Cunningham.) see page 3C Varied see page 3C Arts Center thrives during festive month If the Civic Fine Arts Center had its way, every month would be an arts festival in Sioux Falls, instead of just March.

This month's festival, put on by the Sioux Empire Arts Council, has concentrated on getting art to the people, to inspire the people to get themselves to the art. And the major exhibitor of contemporary art in town is the Civic Fine Arts Center. "The festival has been very helpful," said Ray Shermoe, center director. "It is putting before the public what is happening here all year round. It's very necessary to keep reminding people about art.

You've always got to be before the public." One reason for the constant reminder is the public financial support crucial to keeping the center in operation. "It's been a struggle, but it's much better than it was," Shermoe said. He added, with the smile of a man who can't resist a plug, "Of course, we can always use more support. We work at it all the time, with lots of fund- raising events. We raise most of our own money.

We manage to keep in the black. The center recognizes an obligation to present local, area and regional artists, Shermoe said, and exhibits the work of local artists three or four months a year. "We try to give our members and the public a variety throughout the year," Shermoe said. "We vary it with national exhibits and occasionally we're fortunate enough to have an international exhibit. We could have one-man exhibitions 12 months a year for 12 years, but we want as much variety as possible.

An art advisory board selects the works to be displayed, Shermoe said, with an eye toward the quality of the work, how well-known the artist is and whether the artist is prolific enough to produce a complete show. "We try to get someone who is at least partly professional," Shermoe said. "You could question the word We consider most of the college art professors to be professional because they're trained and they spend a good deal of time in their area, whatever it is. "There are quite a few artists here of that caliber," he added. "I'd say there are 25 artists in the area who fit that description.

"It's good for us to keep these artists in this area," Shermoe noted. "Very few of them can make a living as artists in this area. By showing their work, we hope we can keep them producing. "We also feel we should make our members and the public aware that there are creative people in this area and that they don't have to go to Minneapolis or New York or Chicago to see good things." The nonprofessional artist, whether a "Sunday painter" or otherwise, has a chance at seeing his or her work exhibited, however. "We have a show in July, called 'Art which is juried and open to everyone," Shermoe said.

"It used to be called the 'Amateur But, after 10 years of painting, many of the participants showed a lot of advancement and resented that name. Then we called it the 'Sunday Painters but they didn't think that was much better. After that, it seemed like such a natural thing to call it by the year it was being held; the first one was 'Art The center has finished renovating a downstairs room, which will be a meeting hall and theater for the center's film series, which opens April 19 with "The Golden Age of Comedy." The visual arts remain the museum's focus1, however. "People don't like to admit that they're involved in the arts, yet art is a part of so much of our lives," Shermoe said. "That is our job: to keep the arts alive.

That's what the arts festival is helping us to do." Athletics meets art A dancer's metamorphosis things down." His evolution as an artist has encompassed a host of disciplines, from martial arts to music to acting. "The Japanese theater has had a strong influence on me," Smith said. "The Japanese have always acknowledged that an actor should be able to act, to dance, to sing, to play a musical instrument, to tumble and to know the martial arts. grant from a major in economics to one in theater, even forming his own theater ensemble. The transition from jock to actor and eventually dancer was not a simple one.

"It was a conflict to cut off my past," he recalled. "I didn't communicate with anyone I went to college with for five years. I had to go away from the United States to make that break. I couldn't have made this frocoh I I I point OA iSm fcX i li By MARSHALL FINE Argus-Leader Staff Writer If everything had gone according to plan, Henry Smith might now be a successful Philadelphia banker, getting his exercise from the occasional tennis or raquetball date. He might be another ex-jock, applying himself to the workaday world while 'dreaming of glories past.

But Smith chose to discard the plan, giving up an offer to represent Scotland in the 1970 Commonwealth Games, putting aside his training as a shotputter and weight-lifter and his education as an economist for a different kind of physical endeavor: the performing arts. "I was doing graduate work in Edinburgh on a grant that was similar to a Rhodes Scholarship," Smith said this week. I was invited to represent Scotland in the Games, but I made the decision to go into the performing arts full time. I had to de-' cide between bulking up to about 27S pounds to be a weight-lifter or forgetting about it. I forgot about it.

"I'd been brought up in a fairly conventional manner in Philadelphia. I expected to be a banker. I'd gone to the University of Pennsylvania on a football scholarship. I'd been a weight-lifter. I did sports and all that.

Then I made the metamorphosis." Smith, in Sioux Falls as Affiliate Artist with the South Dakota Arts Council under the auspices of the Civic Dance Association, found a fertile atmosphere of experimental theater in Scotland. He transferred his "I started out doing very physical-ized acting. But I wanted to emphasize the physicality more and got into dance." His art is still being refined. When he performs, he explores spatial re-' lations, defining his body against a given space, then utilizing that area. But he does much more.

He incorporates sound into his presentation, as much a kind of breathing language as actual speech. He yips, grunts and groans, speaking sentences in long, drawn-out syllables that complement his movement. "I try to synthesize motion, sound and music," Smith said. "It's new and yet it's not. It takes a revolutionary act to make a change." transformation in Philadelphia.

"I got into martial arts as part of my training. I used to be an aggressive football player type. I got into fights all the time. I needed something to channel my energy; I found it in aikido (a Japanese martial art). "Making the change was physically painful.

I worked with a Japanese master; it took me years to be able to do the things I do now. My previous training had been toward developing musculature with a blocked attitude. I'd been lifting weights for 10 years. "Mentally, it was not that hard of a transition. My mind was leading my body.

I wanted to make the switch. It was a process of breaking i Henry Smith made the transitidn from aggressive gridder to dedicated dancer. (Photos by Frank Klock.).