“Auguste Rodin, Saguaro Cactus Rib, Arizona” © Stu Jenks 2021, 86 inches tall.
Price: $450, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu.
The reason I chose a career as an artist is because of Auguste Rodin, I kid you not.
I was attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an art student in the mid to late 1970's. I knew at some point I needed to drive up to the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. to see what was there. (Pre-internet. You only knew about many things if you saw them in a magazine, in a book, on television, or in real life.) There was a Calder sculpture there at that time I wanted to see and some other minimalist stuff too. I drove all night in my 1964 Karmann Ghia and got there in the morning, stoned on Mexican Dirt Weed, and happy to be there. I roamed the inside of the Hirshhorn for a while and was pretty impressed.
Then I went outside.
The sculpture garden blew my mind, and it wasn't just the marijuana. Henry Moore, David Smith, Barbara Hepworth, Jacques Lipchitz, Giacomo Manzu, Jean Arp...
And Auguste Rodin.
I had seen Rodin's work in books and in slide presentations in art history class, but never in person. I arrogantly thought his work was just OK. I was a minimalist sculptor and conceptual artist at the time, producing what I thought was thought provoking but not particularly evocative or emotional work, like I try to do now. I was a Joseph Bueys-Donald Judd-Frank Stella guy, not particularly interested in 19th Century art.
Until that morning in 1977, when I saw The Burghers Of Calais, Walking Man, and Balzac for the first time.
I hardly remember Walking Man, but Balzac took my breath away, and The Burghers rendered me speechless (and to those of you who don't know me IRL, I'm a chatty guy. Being struck dumb doesn't happen very often with me.)
I don't know if it happened that day, or on the ride home, or when I got back to art school (I was pretty high don't you know), but I remember thinking to myself, "If Rodin can do that, make evocative work that speaks to both our hearts as well as our minds, I can do that too. I can make powerful art too." I wasn't in anyway comparing myself, then or now, to Rodin. I was just inspired to do the work and see if I could bring a little beauty, a bit of honest feeling and a little magic into the world. That I do think I've done to some degree (even though I wish an art professor or a family member had mentioned the importance of a 401-K at some point.) I have created a body of work over the last 25 years that I'm proud of: The photographs, the books, the albums, the sticks.
I may not have made much money in my life but I have put some beauty, some mystery, some true feeling into the world, and I try to be a good person as I do the work. I've not always succeeded as an artist and as a man, but I truly try.
And it's all because I saw The Burghers of Calais on a fall morning in 1977.
Photos of Rodin's The Burghers of Calais, & Balzac in Washington, D.C., and The Burghers in Calais, France were taken by me.
#rodin, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries