Life was anything but easy growing up on Cutler Street during the early 1940s. At the time, the bustling street in Schenectady’s Mont Pleasant neighborhood was crowded with low-income and immigrant families. Poverty was common, and there was seldom time to do anything but work.
John Van Alstine’s sculptures realize the impossible.
Arcing steel forms teeter on their tips. Massive cuts of granite or slate hover above, floating weightless. Organic and strong, his works symbolize the fantastic.
No wonder his sculpture was selected for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
His “Ring of Unity — Circle of Inclusion” will loom over the Olympic Park this August. The chosen work, a Chinese rock buoyantly suspended in a steel circle, is an ideal metaphor for athletes who push to accomplish unending perfection. Posted on June 29, 2008.
John Van Alstine’s “Circle of Inclusion — Ring of Unity” was selected among 2,800 sculptures to be featured at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. The large steel and stone sculpture is 16 feet in diameter and had to be constructed in China.
Sculpture John Van Alstine stands next to one of his pieces in his Sisyphus series, a work that is typical of his style — massive rough rock suspended, as if weightless, in a graceful circle of steel or bronze.
This is the drawing of Van Alstine’s Olympic sculpture that was sent to Beijing for consideration. His work was part of an open call for international artists. Van Alstine was among 25 non-Chinese artists accepted. Caroline Ramersdorfer, his girlfriend is also lives in Hamilton County, was offered a spot in the Olympic Park too. Her sculpture is fashioned in marble.
John Van Alstine poses outside of his workshop in Wells. His Hamilton County home, a former log mill, provides enough space for him to work, live and display his sculptures in a sculpture garden and an indoor gallery.
