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A TRIBUTE TO KARL STEUCKLEN AT SANDGATE

I can’t say much about Karl that most of you gathered here don’t already know; his character and passion--his profound experience of the natural world, his art and talent for friendship. I met Karl in NYC, in the mid-60’s, when he was preparing for his first show at the Star Turtle Gallery, where I was blown away by the precise draftsmanship of his drawings and the intense palette of his canvases--the biomorphic forms of that period which I now recognize as the natural world in disguise. I missed him when he left the lower East Side in ‘70, but was then immersed in my own efforts to build and operate a Bowery jazz club. In ‘85, after I had sold my club and moved to Belize, Central America, for part of the year, I was eating breakfast at the Hotel Mopan in Belize City when a voice called my name. I turned to see Karl, his blue eyes and golden hair, and instantly knew I had found a lost part of myself. That same year, I came up to Northern NY State on a NYSCA fellowship, met my wife to be, and decided I would settle in Glens Falls. One of the things I looked forward to was being closer to Karl. When our daughter, Charlotte, was still small enough to hold in one arm, Karl held her up to see what real Christmas candles look like on a traditional German tree. The delight in both their eyes still glows like a candle in my mind.
Poets and painters in the Bohemias of bygone days have always shared a special relationship, seeing in each other’s efforts reflections of their own pursuit of the mystery that is, after all, what the process of creation is about--bringing to light what is hidden, the latent intelligence that erupts into our awareness to make life deeper and more vivid. Karl’s work has sought and found this experience in the granite quarries of VT, the sunsets of Belize, the delicate half-tones of the Aegean; he has revealed it in portraits, and non-representational shapes--all with a palette that glows with the mystery of his vision, its logos brought to light. One can see in his Northern Lights invisible energies becoming visible. His “smoked” images are a precise invocation of the unseen forces that shape what we recognize but are themselves beyond shape, while his nudes are the very Eros that connects the implicate and explicate orders. Karl’s work allows us to feel what we might otherwise forget--the well spring of energy.
To practice art in this way is to heal a world otherwise divided, in opposition to itself, flesh vs spirit, light vs darkness. Art as an authentic impulse is a sacred ritual; it knits oppositions, allows us to glimpse the wholeness of creation. Karl’s work embodies this impulse, and what we see when we look at it is the fruit of that journey. He has brought us Golden Apples from the Hesperides. Karl’s has been a hero’s journey, undertaken quietly, even modestyly, but always with a sense of purpose, and childlike wonder. He has held them less as a possession, than as a gift. As artists, we must finally practice the gratitude of what has been given us. The joy and wonder. Both as an artist, Karl reminds me of this. But it is also a reminder of what it is to be human, and for this reminder I am doubly grateful. Thank you for your friendship, Karl. It has meant so much.

Paul Pines