Press

Artist’s profile: David Middlebrook, ’66

“I feel like going to the hospital only three times in 25 years is not bad,” says David Middlebrook, ’66, discussing one unique aspect of being an artist who measures his supplies by the ton. Adds his fiancee Lita Ruble, “He has an uncanny sense of the engineering aspect of each piece . . . but frankly, I can’t bear to watch sometimes.” Without even seeing it, one can marvel at Middlebrook’s work for its sheer size. One of the nation’s most successful “site artists,” he has more than 35 commissioned pieces to his credit. Among them: a 19-foot-tall, 16-ton archway entrance to a two-acre amphitheater at Pueblo (CO) Community College; a 7,000-square-foot marble installation in Sacramento’s Renaissance Tower (home to the California Supreme Court); a three-ton stone mural for San Jose (CA) International Airport, and an in-progress 22-foot-high sculpture across from Stanford University that combines references to Stonehenge with references to the Internet. Yet, “imposing” is the last word Middlebrook, an art professor at San Jose State University, would use to describe his work. “I’m trying to make work that connects with people,” he explains. “I challenge their perception of things. My work always grows out of some understanding of the human condition, but I make art that asks questions rather than answers them.” In addition to working in his California studio, Middlebrook is a sculptor-inresidence at Bottega Versiliese in Pietrasanta, Italy. He has made two dozen extended visits there since 1983 to construct some of his largest works. “With the assistance of Italian craftsmen,” he says, “the execution of work of any scale is possible in stone, steel and bronze. The availability of virtually every stone in the world and the technology to fabricate is Italy’s great attraction.” Though his designs clearly are contemporary, Middlebrook often finds inspiration in ancient works found on both sides of the Atlantic—he has been influenced by sources as varied as the Lascaux cave paintings in France and Peru’s Machu Picchu. “I’m very interested in the history of human expression,” he says, “and how people have such a tremendous need to make marks.” However, it was Middlebrook’s other passion, athletics, that first connected him to Albion. He had distinguished himself in high school athletics, playing football and basketball, and his high school track championships brought him to the attention of Albion College coaches Cedric Dempsey, ’54, and Elkin “Ike” Isaac, ’48. “I wanted to play basketball and run track, and knew I couldn’t do both at a big school,” says Middlebrook. Dempsey, Isaac and visual arts professor Vernon Bobbitt would eventually become valued mentors, steering him through what he admits were some rough times academically. His artistic abilities were his salvation on more than one occasion. He relates how he once bartered a series of detailed anatomical drawings for some much-needed tutoring in biology. Those early struggles seem all the more ironic today, Middlebrook observes, as he has lectured in university settings worldwide. He also vividly remembers an escapade that can only be described as a foreshadowing of his work today. “[Some classmates and I] hot-wired a bulldozer, and stole the Rock,” he recalls of one wild Homecoming weekend. Middlebrook helped construct a ramp, the Rock ended up on the front steps of the Administration Building and Seaton Hall ended up on social probation. “They couldn’t figure out who did it, but they knew it was one of us,” says Middlebrook. Fresh out of college, Middlebrook applied for a football coaching job at rural North Adams (MI) High School. When the school board asked him what he could teach, he replied, “art.” On learning there was no art program at the tiny school, Middlebrook quickly responded, “Well, let’s start one.” He got the job. Under Middlebrook’s guidance, his students staged a sculpture exhibit at the end of the fall semester, and the football team posted its first-ever undefeated season. The experience convinced him he was meant to teach. He headed to graduate school at the University of Iowa and a few years later wound up in California. “I realized I had to get a [college] teaching job, [so I could] continue to be true to my research and not be commercial about my artwork,” notes Middlebrook. “I don’t teach from a reference point of something I learned 15 years ago. . . . My teaching is completely an outgrowth of my daily art activities. I often load up my truck with just exactly what I did yesterday, and . . . share it with my students the next day.” This gift for fusing teaching and art has also made Middlebrook much in demand as a visiting artist. He has spent a full year teaching at both the University of Natal in South Africa and the University of Newcastle in Australia, and has had shorter stints at numerous institutions in the U.S. Middlebrook does not simply teach, but involves his students in his craft—shaping and polishing, assembling finished pieces, and wrestling components around the studio (Middlebrook drives the forklift). “I try to get my assistants as emotionally and spiritually involved as I can, so they’re really a part of it from the aesthetic point of view,” he explains. “To have somebody else do the parts that I would do if I had enough arms and legs, I have to make them a part of the thought process. . . . This isn’t a factory.” And despite the fact that he has already had a career that can by any standards be considered highly successful, Middlebrook has no intention of slowing down. “When you get to a certain developmental stage, you can see possibilities in absolutely anything,” he says. “Your eye gets better, your mind gets sharper, your sensibility gets broader . . . and all of a sudden, there’s no limit. It’s a wonderful liberation.”