American Monuments Finding New Dimensions : Large Scale Public Works ? Real and Imagined, 1982-2022

From 1982 to 2022, John Van Alstine created and installed eighteen large sculptures in the United States and abroad while developing another eighteen proposals that remain unrealized. Although these monumental projects are fewer compared with the over 800 studio works he produced during this 40-year period, they represent a significant part of his career and important contributions to public art that cannot be overlooked.

American Monuments: Finding New Dimensions chronicles this aspect of Van Alstine’s art and highlights the significance of large-scale works in his career. Known primarily for work created in the studio and exhibited in galleries and museums, Van Alstine’s public works reveal a distinct and vital facet of his legacy.

The book delves into a series of works that go beyond what many people typically know about Van Alstine, providing an even more insightful perspective on one of the masters of American sculpture, offering a fresh angle to the previous two books on his life and career, John Van Alstine Sculptures 1971-2018 and American Vistas: The Art and Life of John Van Alstine.

What emerges is an artist who used scale to expand his overall object-making aesthetic. Van Alstine’s art is about engaging, elevating and balancing heavy, earthbound materials like stone and steel, infusing them with a sense of weightlessness and animation. By breathing life into these otherwise inert materials, he tells deeply humanistic stories. On a larger scale, his sculptures radiate energy and intensity, bringing his artistic vision to life.

Born upstate New York in 1952, John Van Alstine grew up in the southern Adirondacks Mountains. After attending St. Lawrence University (1970-72), Kent State University (BFA 1974) and Cornell University (MFA 1976) he joined the faculty at the University of Wyoming, Laramie and later the University of Maryland, College Park to teach drawing and sculpture. In 1986 he left teaching and moved to the NYC area to pursue studio work full time. In 1987 he purchased a 19th century industrial complex on the banks of the Sacandaga River and returned to the Adirondacks in upstate New York where he now lives and works in the restored historic structure. Van Alstine’s work has been exhibited widely (including over 50 solo exhibitions) in this country as well as in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has completed many major large scale outdoor, site-specific commissions installing a large outdoor work for the 2008 Olympic Park, Beijing; a 35' tall piece for the new Indianapolis Airport; and a 28” high work FUNAMBULIST on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing in June 2010. ther notable projects include a major outdoor piece for TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY - Beijing, China. He also completed a 30’h outdoor 911–SCULPTURE/MEMORIAL sculpture using World Trade Tower steel remnants dedicated Sept. 11, 2012 in Saratoga Springs, NY. In 2020 his work CATAPULTA, was selected from over 1200 worldwide applicants and was enlarged to 5 meters and installed in the Wuhu, China, sculpture park in 2021. Van Alstine is a recipient of many individual arts grants and fellowships including from the Gottlieb Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and a number of state arts grants. His work is held in many private and public and corporate collections in this country and Europe, Asia and the Middle East.