Stephanie Revennaugh | A Beautiful Tension

Stephanie Revennaugh’s sculpture plays with the line between tradition and abstraction

By Gussie Fauntleroy

This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

LATELY, THE idea of connection has been coming up in Stephanie Revennaugh’s thoughts with greater frequency. During the past few months of physical distancing and self-isolation, the Montana-based sculptor has found herself thinking about meaningful personal connections among people, deep connections with one’s own heart and being, and even connections between animals of different species—like the horse and dog in her piece PRESENCE (MO & BENSON). The 23-inch-tall bronze features a stately Thoroughbred whose kind and quiet attention meets a whippet’s alert, curious gaze. The line of energy between the two is strong and direct. “When horses and dogs are together, they generally ignore one another,” Revennaugh points out. “Here, they are saying, I see you.”

PRESENCE won Best of Show at this spring’s Cowgirl Up! exhibition at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, AZ, which has been extended through November. It also earned an Award of Excellence at the national juried exhibition Making Their Mark: American Women Artists at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, GA, which took place online. Among the other honors Revennaugh has received over the years, one in particular that stands out is a May 2019 invitation from the king of Bahrain to exhibit in that Middle Eastern island nation alongside equine artists from eight other countries.

“Love of horses truly crosses culture, station, and gender. They are a great equalizer,” says the artist, speaking from her home on a rise overlooking the town of Livingston, MT. Horses have been central in her life for as long as she can remember—first in her dreams, books, and drawings; then in her jobs and competitive riding pursuits; and now in her sculpture. The nuance of equine communication is a continual source of inspiration. “They have their own language, which is subtle and energetic. They read and respond to you,” she says. “You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to a horse.”

REVENNAUGH’S love of horses was among the few constants in a childhood during which her family moved frequently due to both her father’s automotive and aviation mechanical work and her parents’ religious missions. Born in Ohio, she moved to Costa Rica at age 12, then to Bolivia, then back to Ohio. After receiving an associate’s degree in Kentucky, she continued relocating every year or two in adulthood until about 10 years ago, when she settled in Montana. Among the gifts of a peripatetic early life were learning to be comfortable with change and a strong sense of confidence in facing new situations and people. When she began aiming for a sculpture career, for example, she attended shows she hoped to someday take part in, meeting artists and observing how things worked.

The self-reliance and independence that came from starting over in new places also freed Revennaugh to trust her own aesthetic and visual voice. Today that aesthetic finds expression in sculpture that blends traditional and contemporary elements, including highly textural surfaces and the use of cast glass, often paired with steel, as well as the more common bronze. “You can feel the bones and muscles of the underlying anatomy, but when you zoom in, it’s abstraction,” she says of her animal figures. “I’m bringing in the abstract and the real and finding a beautiful tension between the two.”

Revennaugh has always had a desire to pursue both painting and sculpting, but marriage and making a living sidelined her creative aspirations for a number of years. Then one day when she was 36, she was busy at a job she enjoyed, managing a dressage stable in Evergreen, CO. As she swept the horse barn, she suddenly stopped, arrested by a thought: “I love this work, but do I want to be doing this when I’m 60? If I don’t commit to art, I won’t do it, and if I don’t do it, I won’t ever be fulfilled.” She soon signed up for a yearlong painting course with Evergreen painter Don Sahli while continuing to work at the stable.

Then came an opportunity to study painting in southern France, where she ended up living for six months. There she experienced original works by masters she admired. More importantly, she was propelled into a place of no return: She had let go of a wonderful job in a beautiful Colorado mountain town, had lost her beloved dog, and had just broken up with her boyfriend. The sojourn in France was just the move she needed to commit herself to art. “It became clear to me how it all rested on my own efforts; it was not going to happen unless I made it happen,” she says.

Returning to the United States, Revennaugh lived for almost a year with her parents in Ohio, where she set up a small studio and “painted my heart out.” She knew she had inherent talent and a propensity for art. But without foundational instruction—she studied almost no art in college—she needed to immerse herself in painting to develop her gifts and discover her own style. Her subjects at the time were primarily still lifes and landscapes—no horses. “I didn’t want to be a mediocre horse artist or a bad horse artist,” she says. “I wanted to be a good artist.”

IN 2011 Revennaugh felt ready to try her hand at sculpture. She found a weeklong workshop on sculpting the horse with Rod Zullo at the Scottsdale Artists’ School. “From day one I knew this was my medium, it felt so native and natural,” she remembers. “Rod was a great teacher for someone starting out, so generous in sharing his knowledge, especially for understanding the anatomy of the horse and the mechanics of things like armature and working with a foundry.” A couple of months later she signed up for a second workshop with Zullo, this time in Montana. She left Ohio not knowing if her time in the Big Sky State would be for three days or if she was embarking on a new chapter of her life. Almost immediately she decided to extend her stay and found a place to live: a sweet little former one-room schoolhouse on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, with two retired Thoroughbred racehorses for company and endless time to sculpt. She remained there for the next two years.

When she was ready to work with a foundry for the first time, she made the mistake of taking eight sculptures to be cast at once. Especially considering what she wanted for her patinas, the learning curve was almost vertical. She had no way to visualize what her pieces would look like after any combination of chemicals or processes the patina artist suggested. “It was overwhelming,” she says. But she learned, and today she works with patina artist Erik Petersen in Prescott, AZ, whom she considers one of the best in the world. Over the years she has built trusted teams at three foundries in Montana—primarily Northwest Art Casting in Bozeman—and others in Arizona.

Revennaugh has also taken her sculpture into another cast medium: glass. One such piece, MUTUAL II, was a collaboration with glass and mixed-media artist Seth Fairweather. The edition features the horse’s body in various colors of glass including jade, black, and clear with swirls of milky white, each with fabricated steel legs. “It’s like a dance with the materials—you never know exactly what the glass will do,” Revennaugh says. Now working with a glass-casting foundry, she continues to explore a medium that adds to the contemporary aesthetic of her art. The visual nuance, sense of lightness, and contemporary feeling she enjoys in glass are also part of her paintings these days, which she creates in encaustic.

Revennaugh’s sculpture—especially the contrast between steel and glass—reflects her understanding of the inherent complexities within the horse itself. “They’re magnificent, large creatures with rippling muscles and great lungs, yet they’re so fragile at the same time,” she says. “There’s so much polarity: They can be fierce but also delicate, and when they trust you it’s incredibly rewarding.” During the past year her experience in earning that trust intensified as she spent a long stretch of time in Southern California training in the equestrian triathlon competition known as eventing. When the coronavirus restrictions began this spring, she needed to get home and begin a period of self-quarantine.

As soon as she crossed into Montana, she says, “it felt so soothing, like being home.” Herds of elk and antelope and the landscape itself reminded her of a deep desire to reconnect with the animals and land. As a result, wildlife of the mountain West has begun to appear in her art, beginning with a tabletop-size buffalo. She sees the time of enforced quiet as an opportunity for reconnection and recalibration, out of which new creation emerges. “It’s a dance: I have an intention, and then things move toward becoming, and I respond,” she says. “That’s the way I work and live.”

representation
Altamira Fine Art, Jackson, WY; Vail Village Arts, Vail, CO; Gallery MAR, Carmel, CA; Cross Gate Gallery, Lexington, KY.

This story was featured in the August 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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