Stephen Althouse: The Tools

Payne Hurd

A resident of Rebersburg, Pennsylvania, Stephen Althouse developed a passion for Amish artifacts and culture during his childhood in rural Bucks County. This exhibition features photographs of handmade tools called Die Waerkzeichen, in Pennsylvania Dutch—that are attributes of Amish humility and simplicity. In his work, Althouse drapes the tools with shrouds to create cryptic assemblages. Trained as a sculptor, Althouse eventually found his black-and-white photographs of his sculptures… Show more to be more powerful than the assemblages themselves, and so he now disassembles the sculptures after he photographs them. For this exhibition, however, Althouse will include an actual assemblage, so that viewers will be able to see the process of how he transforms inanimate everyday objects into works of art, removing them from their original context and giving them new meaning.

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