Martin Wanserski
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Sculpture e-mail: mwansers@usd.edu |
Marty grew up in a neighborhood of Racine, Wisconsin during the post-war years. When he was 10 years old, he was given his first pocket knife, which provided him with an instrument of personal expression, a tool of visual adventure, and the exciting ability to magically change small chunks of wood into hand carved totems of purpose and meaning.
Chicago was not very far away, and his family would take many trips down along the lake to visit museums and to take in the diverse cultural atmosphere and environment that it provided. It was in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History that Marty was first able to see some actual carvings reflecting the deep rooted cultures of human history.
During the depression, Marty's father had attended Art classes at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, but had to quit after one semester because of the economic hard times. He later pushed for his sons to learn a trade, while his mother hoped that someone in the family might go into education and be a teacher.
Marty decided to go into Art, as it seemed to potentially make use of and encompass much of what he felt was most stimulating and interesting. He began classes at the Layton School of Art in 1962. Between the school and the museum, Marty began to seriously look at art, as Art. He was especially inspired by two paintings in the museum's permanent collection, "Saint Francis in His Tomb" by Francisco de Zurberan, and "The Wood" by Jules Bastien-LePage. Romantic Realism continued to be a thread that would weave itself through much of Marty's own subsequent work.
Because of his enjoyment and satisfaction in making "things", Marty decided on sculpture as his major artistic focus. Much of Marty's work during these undergraduate years involved medium-sized bronze castings involving nautical forms and themes. Marty graduated from Layton School of Art in 1966 with a B.F.A. in Sculpture.
Marty was then accepted into the Graduate Sculpture program at Syracuse University. Inspired by the religious Art that he grew up with in his Catholic neighborhood of Racine, and the religious figures in the Baroque churches of Europe, he began his years at Syracuse making partially complete figures cast in hydrocal which were colored later with acrylic paint. The materials and techniques seemed right to him, but subject still spun speculation and confusion around the heart of his work. In 1968, Marty graduated with a M.F.A. in Sculpture from Syracuse University.
Marty and his wife joined the Peace Corps following his M.F.A. and spent a year and a half in Bogota, Columbia illustrating slides for educational purposes. In Bogota, he was living with the Inca, and that experience had a significant impact on him and his artwork.
When they returned to the United States in 1970, they decided to move to Chicago where they had a variety of employment opportunities and an interesting mix of diverse cultures.
In 1975, Marty took a teaching position in the Sculpture Department of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. As an artist, figurative work was still very important to Marty, but size was an issue that needed to be reconsidered, as shipping and storage traditionally presented logistic dilemmas for three dimensional artists. For the first five years in Vermillion, Marty decided to experiment with sculptural work that met UPS standards for weight and size. The quality and size actually appealed to him, and he was able to let his work creatively evolve more rapidly without the distraction of logistical details.
In 1982 Marty's life took a tragic turn. On his first sabbatical, he was involved in an accident in Chicago while visiting friends. After attending a John Cage concert at Navy Pier, the double-deck bus that Marty and his friends were riding on passed under a viaduct without adequate room for passage. He and one of his friends were dead on arrival, and were revived in the emergency room of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. His wife Mary and their two sons, family, and friends waited in the outer room and held to any thread of hope they could find.
After three weeks in a coma, Marty miraculously began to come around, and made amazing improvements each day. In therapy, he began to carve wood as he first did with his pocket knife when he was a child. The medical team began to write about his case in medical journals after he built a wooden tool box for himself (interestingly, a project assignment that he traditionally would give to his Sculpture I classes).
The themes of life and death seemed to come frighteningly close to Marty and everyone close to him. In 1985, he returned to the Art Department and to his teaching position in the Sculpture Department.
As a respected member of the regional Art community, Marty continued to produce work that was personal and significant, and was often juried into regional exhibitions and Invitationals at the Sioux City Art Center, the Civic Fine Arts Center in Sioux Falls, as well as other centers of Visual Art.
In 1990, Marty was commissioned to create a sculpture of William Shakespeare for the new campus Shakespeare Garden, which has been well received through the years, and much appreciated by the University community.
In 1995, the Rapid City Arts Council and the Rapid City Cement Plant commissioned him to produce a public sculpture titled "Rapid Trout" for Founders Park in Rapid City. This colored cement sculpture is one of the largest public pieces of sculpture in Rapid City. It is reflective of Marty's abilities to work up from original sketches, to three dimensional models, to a full-scale piece, involving collaborations with engineers and cement plant workers.
During his sabbatical in 1998, he was invited to be an Artist in Residence at the Fundacion Valparaiso, in Mojacar, Spain, which inspired the production of a body of work exhibited the following year in the Main Gallery at the University of South Dakota.
Producing Art and being a productive, creative Artist is more than a full-time occupation, but in reality, Marty actually spent the vast majority of his time at the University of South Dakota in activities connected to being the kind, generous, and insightful teacher that he is.
written by John Banasiak, Professor of Fine Art, University of South Dakota