Djerassi ‘87-’91, 1987-1991

six sculptures, plywood, tarpaper, chicken wire and painted stucco
Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Woodsite, California

I first met Mauro Staccioli in the early 1980s when he hit me in the eye without prior warning. It was not done deliberately – and certainly not brutally, since he is too subtle an artist – but the consequences were indelible. Instead of a black eye, which surely would have disappeared by now, my first vision of his huge cement “Celle Sculpture” captured my imagination in a way that few geometric shapes have in my visits outdoor sculpture exhibitions. This one, of course, had its own superb provenance, situated as it was and still is one the most spectacular contemporary sculpture collections in Europe, that of Giuliano Gori at the Fattoria di Celle near Florence. Staccioli’s placement of urban cement in an unspoiled Italian outdoor setting to untamed trees and brush convinced me that a similar experiment should also be conducted in the New World.

In 1987, Mauro Staccioli paid the first of five multi-week visits to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program that I founded in 1979 in memory of my daughter Pamela, who had been promising artist when she committed suicide at the age of 28. Initially, it seemed as if the artist had simply come to hike around the hundreds of acres of redwood, madrone and live-oak forest in Santa Cruz Mountains of San Francisco Bay area – the site of our program that had so often overwhelmed visitors from the Old World. Staccioli hiked and sketched and vastly improved his English, wile making friends with many of the others artists that were in residence at the same time, notably the photographer Bob Tyson. After a few weeks, he announced that he was ready to propose a project within a stand of old live oak trees whose extended branches nearly touched the ground, thus creating the impression of an outdoor vaulted space.

Staccioli’s sketches looked intriguing, but none of us had any idea of the ultimate scope of the project, which simply grew and grew to an extraordinary grouping of six large sculptures. He built them during three extended visits in 1988, 1989 and 1991 in a site extending over several acres. The first object, a huge tetrahedron fixed to the ground on one tip and vicariously balanced on another tip against a tree trunk, seemed extraordinarily vulnerable, yet it survived unscathed the massive Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 that caused so much damage in San Francisco Bay Area. Of course, I – an organic chemist by profession – was pleased in an I-told-you-so sort of way, since unconsciously, Staccioli had chosen as his first geometric figure the most chemical of all: the tetrahedral structure of Carbon with the atom in its center and its four valences extending to the corners (even one of the most important organic chemical journals of my profession is entitled “Tetrahedron”).

His second figure had no geometric or chemical precedent since the impetus was a unique circle created by a weird growth in one of the oak trees. Into it, Mauro fitted a 20-foot high shaft that I, at least, visualized as a lance thrown by Zeus from heaven to demonstrate his prowess. Or was it a giant celestial needle that some goddess had thrust to earth, beating Zeus to the draw? The next three shapes, each precariously supported by a tree branch or trunk, were based on parallelograms or triangles of which the last was balanced all too daringly on just one tip. When the 1989 earthquake struck, the huge triangle slowly fell on its side without further damage. Upon his return in 1991, Staccioli not only raised the triangle to its original position, but nearly doubled its size as a challenge to the next earthquake which surely will strike the San Francisco area during the next fifty years, if not sooner. And as the ultimate exclamation point, he constructed the tallest of all sculptures, a thin crescent-shape column, at least 50 feet high that stands embraced by the branches of an enormous madrone tree.

One question immediately arises as one walks among these outwardly massive structures, which are all delicately balanced or supported by existing natural vegetation. How could one artist have constructed all by himself such huge concrete objects seemingly weighing many tons without major mechanical equipment or a team of assistants? In fact, the sculptures consist solely of plywood covered with tarpaper, chicken wire and stucco that was then painted a shade of gray – a perfect surface for the ever-changing play of sun light through the leaves and branches of the surrounding vegetation. What makes the magic of the entire setting work is the apparent contradiction between the severe formal lines of the massive geometric shapes made from industrial material and irregularity of the natural vegetation that supports these object. Without nature, the construct could not operate – aesthetically or functionally.

The property on which our Resident Artists Program is located bears the name “SMIP Ranch” SMIP is an acronym for the originally chosen name, “Steroids Made It Possible” that I changed subsequently to “Sic Manebimus in Pace” during the Vietnam War. I now realize that I could just as well refer to “Staccioli Made It Possible”.

SMIP Ranch, Woodside
29 March 2002

Carl Djerassi,Staccioli at Djerassi, in Mauro Staccioli in California curated by Francesca Pola, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles, 2002, pp. 72-74