samuel f stimpert

October Group Show and some new work.

2008-09-24T12:43:00.004-06:00

I have the extreme honor of being included in this group show with some other fantastic artists.

please visit
rivet gallery
for more info. I have also completed a couple of new pieces for this show.
ENTOMBED I ~ Aluminum and Epoxy Resin ~ 2008
ENTOMBED I (detail) ~ Aluminum and Epoxy Resin ~ 2008
ENTOMBED II ~ Aluminum and Epoxy Resin ~ 2008
ENTOMBED II (detail) ~ Aluminum and Epoxy Resin ~ 2008

Dark Roasted Blend ~ Blog

2008-07-23T13:21:00.002-06:00

I just found myself included in a interesting article about Fashion and the Gas Mask on the blog Dark Roasted Blend Check it out here: Cold War Echo: Gas Masks

Dream, New Series, and the Infamous Piss Patina

2007-11-11T14:37:00.000-07:00

I had a dream a several months ago that I was at a pour, all the regular folks in attendance. We were pouring aluminum with Francis and Nels manning the crucible and myself doing the job of slag and patch. Suddenly, the crucible spilled into the sandpit and completely filled, which is entirely impossible because the crucible does not hold anywhere near enough aluminum to fill the pit. Everyone scattered except for me. Unexpectedly I felt myself falling backwards into the pit. As my body sunk slowly, the pit filled with metal. However, I realized I wasn't burning but rather merging with the metal as if I was becoming metal myself, which caused a very strange physical sensation. I continued to sink until eventually only my face was exposed. When I opened my mouth to scream before becoming completely submerged, I woke up!

Weird dream!!
The following sculptures (in progress) are the response.

These pieces are about midway through the finish process. I have spent several hours removing residue left over from the molds used to cast them. They were then sandblasted, followed by a few hours doing the first half of the finish sanding, down to about a 600 grit.

After this comes the fun part! People often ask me what chemicals I use to get the vivid greens and blues in my finished pieces. The answerer is simple: I take them outside and leave them in the weather, often for months, and every chance I get I piss on them. Yup you heard right! The ammonia in urine makes for some really great color! While you can use store bought ammonia, urine has something else in it that lends to a more vivid color. The color shifts based on different human or animal urine. I have experimented with cat and dog urine and have had male friends oblige, which has resulted in relatively dramatic shifts in color. I have yet to have a woman oblige, but I am very interested in seeing if it would provide any different results. I know that female dog urine kills grass while male dog urine does not, so there is obviously a difference in the chemistry of canine urine. Whether or not this is true with human urine, I'm not sure! I think I will go now and see if I can convince my wife to pee in a cup for me!

Featured on Under Ground Art Union

2007-11-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

I have the most esteemed honor of being the feature artist for November, 2007 on
underground art union

This site has featured some of the most prominent artists in the underground art movement.
the likes of Chet Zar, Michael Hussar, and Travis Louie just to name a few.
Please take a moment to visit the site and make sure you check out the gallery pages of all the other fantastic artists.

Interview:
www.undergroundartunion.com/code/interviews/interview004.html

Gallery Page:
www.undergroundartunion.com/code/gallery/artists/stimpert/stimpert.html

Everything you never wanted to know about me.

2007-05-31T17:34:00.000-06:00

Here are a couple of recent write-ups about me: Read original article from boise weekly here Pouring Heavy Metal Artist Samuel Stimpert lets it flow By Katy Dang The process of turning a chunk of metal into liquid and then into a metal sculpture is truly something to behold. The metal is melted into a glowing, flowing liquid, unrecognizable as the solid form that it usually takes. It goes from a bright yellow to a raging, rosy red, taking on the colors of a coastal sunset as it sets into its new form. This is a process that has fascinated artists for centuries. The alchemy of changing lead into gold is one thing: changing liquid into an original sculpture is another thing altogether, but with similar connotations. Sculptor Samuel Stimpert relishes all aspects of the process. In general, Stimpert is a person who makes things happen. He is well-known as one of the founders of Visual Arts Collective (VAC), which has become the hub of progressive art in Boise since opening in 2005. Stimpert runs the gallery with his wife, Anneliessa, and a core of committed volunteers. He takes an active role in the foundry at BSU, helping to facilitate pours. He also produces his own artwork: sculptures that confront their audience with uncomfortable, apocalyptic images that command attention and also show the subtle interaction of the materials that he uses. While he puts in the effort to make these things happen, he also has the sense to let them occur naturally. In each of these projects, he puts the process in motion and controls the details to facilitate the activity, but allows the freedom to let things manifest as they will. Stimpert was born and raised in Caldwell, Idaho. He was brought up surrounded by art: His father, Bob Stimpert, was an art teacher at South Junior High School for 30 years. "I've been throwing ceramics my whole life," says the younger Stimpert. He originally followed a path with a much different creative bent, earning a degree in culinary arts from Boise State. After some time in the food industry, he decided to pursue a degree in graphic design. It was during this time that Stimpert's life changed course. "I took a sculpture class from Francis Fox, and that was it," Stimpert recalls. "I dropped all of the graphic design plans and started focusing on making sculpture." He was able to work with Fox at the metal pours at Boise State, which has a gas-fired foundry that melts bronze and aluminum. He immersed himself in the various stages of the process and experimented with both approaches to casting: the ceramic shell and the direct pour method. Along the way, he became enamored with the process of the pour. "For me, it is as much about doing it, as it is about the end product," says Stimpert. "I love the whole process, from melting down used car parts to casting them into a form of your own design." "Sam was a student, and now he is a friend," says Fox. "The way that he works is very direct and spontaneous. He just loves working with metal." Professor Tamsie Ringler from Mt. Hood Community College introduced Stimpert to cast-iron pouring at a summer workshop in 2003. Iron pours are very involved and take three or four days to do. They use a different type of foundry known as a cupolette, which is fired using spent coal (coke). The first iron pour was an intense undertaking for Stimpert, who worked with the molten metal pour from 5 a.m. to midnight. "I actually got heat stroke and physically ill," he says. "The theme for that pour became: 'Pour metal--puke--sleep--pour metal." Stimpert took on an independent project with Fox to build a cupolette for Boise State, and "Floyd" was completed in 2003. Stimpert's own work includes striking imagery. His Siddhartha Gotama in Gas Mask is a life-sized vision of the Hindu Buddha. Stimpert shows the prince in traditional robes, sitting cross-legged, with a gas mask on his face. It is the second in a series called "Icons" that Stimpert has been working on for over six years. The first was Madonna and Child Enthroned in Gas Mask. "That particular image came out of a dream that I had just after 9/11," says Stimpert. "I dreamt that the Virgin Mary came to me wearing a gas mask. She was worried that her baby was going to be born deformed. "I think the religious icons wearing gas masks make the comment that even the gods aren't safe from our destruction," says Stimpert. The Siddhartha Gotama in Gas Mask sculpture is currently in the B.O.D.Y Show at Studio on 4th Gallery in Reno, Nevada. The image of the gas mask is used in many of Stimpert's sculptures. "To me, they are a symbol of triumph and defeat at the same time," he explains. "They provide clean air and allow you to breathe in toxic environments. They indicate a cause and an effect at the same time. "It's all a part of the hypocrisy of the human experience," he continues. "I think we're all hypocrites in a way. I fancy myself an environmentalist, but I drive a big truck. People wear silver jewelry and use items made from clay, and those materials come from strip mining, from raping the earth. We all live that way, constantly; every living thing is that way. And maybe that's what we're supposed to do. I mean, I want to recycle, and I want to do good, yet I still have to live." Stimpert often lets his work take on a form of its own. "One of the things I find most interesting about Sam's work is his process," says artist Sue Latta. "He is very loose, and allows the materials to do what they do without trying to control the outcome. He revels in the unpredictability. "I think his work is a lot like his personality," says Latta. "You know that his hand has been in it, but he hasn't clasped so tightly that you still see his fingerprints. It's more like he starts the process and then just lets the natural outcomes happen." Stimpert has found that running VAC keeps him inspired to keep creating new artwork. "We've been really busy, so I haven't had much time, but at the same time, being at the gallery has piqued my interest in doing more and more work," he says. "Now, the results just come in spurts instead of being a constant." One of the eventual goals of VAC is to provide a campus for artists to be able to come together to create their work. "When you get out of school, you lose that community of people working in different mediums in the same area, who help each other out and push each other along," says Stimpert. He also envisions creating a traveling foundry that can be taken to schools, particularly in rural areas where farmers often cast their own tools. "I think that could be a cool way to get kids interested in art, and also bring their fathers into the process. I'd like to show that metal and cast work can be accessible. You don't have to pay big bucks and send it to a foundry. I want people to know that they can do it themselves." Rest assured that Sam Stimpert will keep up his work with VAC and keep taking his art further. "His work is very detailed, very interesting, and a little bit controversial," says his father, Bob Stimpert. "He pushes the limits, but that's what artists are supposed to do." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read the original article on the Reno News and Review Website

Body parts B.O.D.Y. Reno News and Review By Chad Sorg We know that B.O.D.Y. is an art exhibition. By the title, we can figure out the theme. But ask what the acronym stands for, and you'd better be ready to hear a variety of lewd, rude, crude and purely nonsensical responses, none of them serious--"Butts, Orgasm, Dick, Yo-Yo," for instance. Candace Nicol, artist and B.O.D.Y.'s organizer, could offer only this to clarify: "It's open for interpretation." Nicol, 40ish, with an abundance of giggles and a warm, chipper demeanor, teaches art at Truckee Meadows Community College. She's married, has a daughter, and creates mixed media art incorporating photos of the male nude. In recent exhibitions in which she's been featured, the artist's recurrent theme has become obvious: She wants us to see more naked men. With B.O.D.Y., Nicol invited sculptors, painters, performance artists and printmakers who she knows to exhibit here in Reno with her. Five of the artists are from Boise, Idaho, where Nicol studied art. One is from Maryland, and one is from Lake Tahoe. Three, including Nicol, are Renoites. Nicol's two photography and resin works feature the only naked men on view, though a frighteningly giant testicle-like wax and latex ball hangs from a frighteningly sharp steel hook gracing the center of the exhibit space. Across the room from this piece is a work made of 35 clear resin blocks hung from hooks with what looks like bloody smears and violent red gouges on 31 of them. Sue Latta made both of these pieces, and she explains that the inspiration came from seeing "suspension," where people pierce their skin with hooks and hang their bodies from the ceiling while the skin's stretching accommodates the weight. The big hung ball renders this practice quite realistically. Latta says the resin blocks on the wall are a "calendar reference," and the piece is called "Only Women Bleed." Titled after an Alice Cooper song, the artwork clearly refers to menstruation, but more pointedly, it deals with "cutters," or those who make slices on their arms, legs and other bodily locations with a razor in an unhealthy effort to cope with stress. The artist indulges that her daughter is/was a cutter. Also gripping the audience's attention is a life-size cast-iron Buddha draped in saffron fabric and a cast-iron gas mask. The Buddha, created by Samuel Stimpert, is a reference to our current state of the world, in which countries such as India have taken over the iron industry. The United States, with fairly strict environmental protection laws, can no longer compete with other countries that host lax pollution laws. Iron production is dangerously pollutant. For this reason, there is only one iron foundry left in this country. Conceptually tight, the India/Iron theme carries over in the form of a wall-mounted manhole cover halo with an Indian mandala design. Poison, pollution and war are points Stimpert explores with two other works included in the show that present gas masks, in the words of the artist, "as a symbol of triumph and defeat." B.O.D.Y. isn't an erotic display of the human form or a macabre exhibition of flesh. The varied meanings and analogies in the art point to our ongoing fascination with the human vessel. It is a high-minded display that deals with our curiosity. But damn it, would somebody please explain what B.O.D.Y. really stands for?

I will be part of the B.O.D.Y show in Reno NV

2007-02-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

B.O.D.Y. art exhibit and Grambo Report live at Studio on 4^th.

B.O.D.Y. opens at Studio on 4^th, Saturday, April 28^th, 2007, 7-10pm. The exhibit runs through May 20^th and is open to the public Friday and Saturday, 10am-6pm. Studio on 4^th is located at 432 East 4^th Street, Reno, NV.

Nine artists from around the United States are working with concepts surrounding the body-focusing on manipulations of the human form, biomorphic variations, and how technology has changed the way we communicate and interact with each other. Artists exhibiting at STUDIO on 4^th include Isaac Grambo, Angela Katona-Batchelor, EunKang Koh, Sue Latta, Candace Nicol, Jeremy Mayer, Nolan Preece, Samuel F. Stimpert and Justin Strom.

On Saturday, April 28^th at 7:30PM during the opening gala, Studio on 4^th will feature THE GRAMBO REPORT, the nation's leading source for public access cable news. Isaac Grambo, a Boise, ID performance/video artist and political activist is teaming with Studio on 4^th, for a once-in-a-lifetime event. An episode of the acclaimed series will be taped in front of a live audience, outside of Idaho, for the FIRST TIME. After the program, Anchor Isaac Grambo will be available to answer questions and sign autographs. Don't miss your chance to be a part of this ground-breaking news powerhouse IN PERSON!

Candace Nicol, the curator of B.O.D.Y. believes the artists’ works weave together a political/social narrative that exemplifies the complexities of the human body. “I chose 4 artists working in this area and 5 artists working outside of Nevada. I wanted a diversity of medium and content. The works being shown range from three-dimensional resin casts, from worn-out typewriter figures, from cast-steel gas masks that haunt at war ridden hysteria – to gigantic male and female nudes layered under a mist of resin and screenprints. One artist, Nolan Preece, long-time Nevadan artist will be showing his ‘Nolangrams,’ a photo process that accentuates sensuous curves and suggestive shapes that allude to the body erotic. Another artist, EunKang Koh, newest transplant to Reno and printmaking professor at UNR will showcase etchings from her series ‘Menu for Dinner’. In her work, she depicts interactions between human/animal hybrid creatures to address this subject matter.”

Studio on 4^th, also known as the Dream Factory, has developed and grown from the generosity of two men, artist Jim Zlokovich and business owner Mike Steedman. The multi-use space has been reserved for showcasing music, visual arts, performing arts and events in the Reno/Tahoe area. For more information contact Studio on 4^th, 775-786-6460.

Contact Information: Candace Nicol, B.O.D.Y. curator info@candacenicol.com Jim Zlokovich and Mike Steedman Studio on 4^th432 East 4^th Street, Reno, NV 89512 775-378-7720

4 years later....It's Finally Done

2007-02-07T19:00:00.001-07:00

4 years later....It's Finally Done Siddhartha Gotama in Gas Mask 2003-2007 bronze, iron, steel, fabric samuel stimpert It took me 4 years to finish this piece but it is finally done and showing in the "last minute show" @ VaC along with a bunch of other great artists! If you are in the Boise area come check it out in person!!

New Site

2006-12-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

Check out my new website!

CRAP! I have a blog?

2006-01-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy over the past few months...I actually forgot that I had a blog! I have been spending 99.9% of my time working on or at my new gallery Visual Arts Collective (VaC). Things have been going very well there all things considered. My wife Anneliessa and I have recently separated from our partners at the gallery. This was very stressful and scary at first but we are staying steadfast to the original vision of the gallery and moving forward at breakneck speed. We have had several successful shows with throngs of people in attendance. Check out some images from the shows in our gallery pages: DEPARTURE SUPERDELICIOUS HUBRIS GRAND OPENING SHOW We have many more shows in the works. Along with a ton of great events planned for the future that will continue to show to the Boise community that a multi-use art space in this city is a viable and important endeavor. So far the support has been overwhelming!! We have received a lot of press and positive support from the community. Check out our PRESS page to read what people are saying about VaC. Meanwhile ,work on my art has suffered a bit and I have had little time to dedicate to my own work...but I think as things settle down at VaC I will begin to be able to focus more of my free time on working on my sculpture. LETS HOPE SO! I doubt that many folks actually read this blog...but I am going to dedicate myself to posting more regularly. Even if it is only to help document my activities for my own records. Happy Blogging Sam

Lazy Morning

2005-07-23T10:08:00.000-06:00

What bored nerds do on lazy mornings!

A's Birthday and Winner! footage

2005-07-16T11:39:00.000-06:00

Today is Anneliessa's Birthday (my wonderful wife). I was sitting around waiting for her to get up so I could take her out for a birthday breakfast and got very bored so I messed around a bit with the video footage from a Boise Naval Base performace I participated in called Winner! * "Winner! examined our want of celebrity, fame, and recognition. Audience members were let in to the performance one at a time. Upon entering, they were proclaimed the winner, given a trophy, and congratulated. They were then led to a press conference where they could give a speech, or answer questions from the “press corp.” When the next winner came in, they were ushered into a reception area." *quote from Boise Naval Base web site Click Play for a little video snippet from Winner! a recent Boise Naval Base Show.

Days Off!

2005-07-15T07:35:00.000-06:00

Salvation is here! 4 DAYS OFF OF WORK!!! 2 Days to do finish work on sculptures *see pics 2 Days to drink beer and burn stuff on the banks of a foggy mountain lake. What more could one ask for?

Boise Naval Base New Site goes Live.

2005-07-11T07:05:00.000-06:00

Boise Naval Base has a new site! www.boisenavalbase.com Boise naval base is a Boise, Idaho based performance art troop of which I am a active member. Flint has been working very hard on our new site and it is looking exceptional.

2:00am 4th of July

2005-07-05T02:14:00.000-06:00

Went to a party tonight at Skyler's Place. Crowd was filled with young people with fresh and exciting faces. The vibe was interesting with throngs of artsy fartsy kids flowing in and out of the house. dj inside...corrin and I danced for a couple hours..fire dancers outside...euro rap bands. All in all an intense evening. The whole vibe made me have a really good feeling about boise and the way things are going. It seems like its ready for change...to have a little excitement. This excites me. Bed Wayz Right Wayz adieu *fire dancers made me think about pouring iron and for some reason this photo seems appropriate.

4th of July

2005-07-04T10:20:00.000-06:00

Working on sculpture this morning. I am in the process of preparing for a small show at Picture This Gallery in Boise, Idaho. Spending the day doing finish work on a couple of pieces. I really enjoy my time in the studio. I work so much lately that I just don't have the time to get in the studio as much as I would like to. The show at Picture This is going to force me to spend a little more time over the next ten days and I am really looking forward to getting back at it. *image is the piece I am working on at the moment...still doing sanding and finish work, I hope to get to the patina stage this evening

Blue and Mika @ Box Lake

2005-07-03T14:31:00.000-06:00

Posted a random picture for interface testing. This photo is super old, probably close to 6 years :S man how the days fly by...Blue my "mountain" dog in the foreground and my daughter Mika in the background.

Blog?

2005-07-03T14:20:00.000-06:00

So this is it. I am starting a blog. Why? I am not even sure. I guess to see what they heck they are all about. I also look forward to having a place to spew my thoughts and randomly vomit ideas upon the unsuspecting world. Where this will lead...who knows? I certainly don't. Maybe I will become bored with it and end up never making a single new post....this is very likely. Maybe I will become entranced in it and post everyday like some self obsessed freak...this also could be likely. So be it This is my blog **Photo is of my beloved dog rufus