Biography:

David DeStafeno was born in Darby, Pennsylvania in 1967. His first carvings, when he was four years old, were accomplished with bars of soap and a butter knife. In 1986, he enrolled at Rutgers University, with the intention of becoming a wildlife biologist. However, David eventually found that he preferred to pursue the visual arts. In 1994, he enrolled at the University of New Mexico in order to study photography. While he awaited the arrival of his photography equipment, which was being shipped from the East Coast, David began experimenting with carving. First, he carved clay, then wood, and then a piece of sandstone he had found outside of Albuquerque. When David put chisel to stone, he knew immediately that he knew how to carve and that is what he has been doing ever since. UNM did not offer instruction in stone carving, so David left the university and moved to a rural area, south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has dedicated himself to the study and practice of stone sculpture. David is a self-taught sculptor who works primarily in stone.

Artist statement:

In the years I've been sculpting, my carvings have evolved from the human form, to abstract figures, and finally to pure abstraction. In terms of subject matter, what I am most interested in is the interface between subjective perceptions and the dynamic constants that seem to underlie our human construction of reality. To me, abstraction, with its lack of literal references, allows the greatest opportunities to illustrate what words cannot.

Mass, volume, material, lines of movement and textures all have the ability to reflect and express human awareness. While singular elements can be used to express awareness, the conjunction of disparate elements has the incredible capacity to communicate greater complexities and subtleties of what we apprehend. Nothing stands alone, it is the conjunction of things that gives them definition.

As with life, sculpture is a whole that is composed of individual elements. Where does the element lose its individuality and start to characterize the whole? Where can the whole be differentiated into its elements? In sculpture, I explore the interplay between sum and parts and hope to challenge the viewer's ideas of perception.

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