For much of his life, sculptor Ira Matteson, who turns 99 in June, has been working with the elemental materials of wood, iron and bronze.
His house in Thetford has a Spartan quality, stripped-down and minimalistic, with the exception of scores of pieces of sculpture that hang on walls, stand on tables and shelves, and are lined up next to each other on a couch, as if they were guests at a party.
A visitor might be forgiven for thinking that he has walked into a gallery. But Matteson does live and work here, dividing his time between making art and reading.
When interviewed, he had recently returned from walking a mile around the campus of Dartmouth College; he regularly swims at the college pool during the week.
Matteson is small-framed, with wispy hair, and he wears glasses. He does a walk-about of his house, inside and out, stopping in front of his free-standing and wall-relief sculptures to explain what he made them from and how he did it. He speaks carefully and precisely.
Outside, some of his sculptures have been placed at the bases of trees, or on the steps to his house.
The free-standing wooden sculptures, often of the human figure from feet to hips, or hips to head, are attenuated and painted black or white.
Some of the wood retains its bark, so that the sculptures have a rough but patterned surface. There’s a hint of the stacked, layered wooden assemblages of Louise Nevelson, one of the greats of 20th century American sculpture.
Matteson doesn’t work much with color, perhaps because he has some color-blindness, he said. And he never was much interested in painting.
But he does do rubbings of bark on Japanese paper, a technique called frottage that was developed by the German surrealist Max Ernst and involves placing paper over an uneven surface and producing an image by going over the paper with a pencil or other tool.
Matteson’s wall-reliefs, which he carves and assembles from butternut wood, retain the three-dimensionality of the human figure against the two-dimensional wall surface. He uses a jigsaw to carve the wood. He might make a torso from three or four pieces of wood, for example.
When he connects the pieces each one emerges from the whole on a different plane, so that a figure seems to have its own torque, and kinetic energy.
To enhance that appearance of contained action, he said, he both tilts the figures in unexpected directions, so that they’re not read straight-on, and he also chooses his wood carefully.
“I’ve chosen the movement of the grain to help that,” he said.
Matteson and his wife moved to Thetford from Ohio in 1994. Helen Matteson, who died in 2011, was also an artist: her drawings and watercolors adorn the white walls. Both artists are included in the exhibition “Director’s Choice,” currently on view at BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vt.
BigTown director Anni Mackay met Matteson 2½ years ago. One of the things that struck her about him, she said, is that he is one of those artists “who are really serious about the inquiry. It’s just such a sustaining focus for him and he never let go of it.”
Matteson grew up in Wethersfield, Conn., south of Hartford, not far from the Connecticut River. When other high school students headed off to college, Matteson headed for New York. He moved there in 1937 and found a place to stay at the YMCA.
He had an interest in radios, and when he got to the city he looked for work in the manufacturing of airplane radios. When he learned that that work was only seasonal, someone who knew of Matteson’s interest in art recommended that he look at the Art Students League, founded in 1875.
The League’s roster of teachers and students is a Who’s Who in American art: Jackson Pollock, James Rosenquist, Helen Frankenthaler, Norman Rockwell, Eva Hesse and Thomas Hart Benton, among them.
Two of the League’s best-known teachers, sculptors Arthur Lee and William Zorach, taught Matteson over the years, before and after the war.
Matteson also got odd jobs through the League, and for a time worked at the now-defunct Riverside Museum, which housed the art of Russian-born Nicholas Roerich in an Art Deco building on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive. (The Roerich collection is now in a brownstone on the Upper West Side.)
When the war came, Matteson was drafted into the Army, spent time on the West Coast and was then sent to England. He recalled side trips to London to the theater and hearing, while in the audience, the click-click-click of German bombs passing overhead. When the war ended, he was sent to Germany near Wiesbaden to help dismantle chemical weapons depots.
When he returned to the U.S., like many veterans, he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to go back to the Art Students League, and taught art classes down in Greenwich Village. It was in one of the classes that he met his future wife, Helen Dwyer.
From 1953 to 1955 Matteson was awarded the Rome Prize fellowship in sculpture to the American Academy in Rome. The Mattesons then moved back to New York, where he began teaching again.
In 1958, they had a daughter, Abigail. In 1968, he and his wife moved to Ohio where he took a position teaching art at Kent State University and remained there until he and his wife moved to Vermont on the suggestion of an old friend and fellow artist, Martha Boyajian, who lived in Strafford, and knew him from his Art Student League days.
Because there were no nearby foundries when Matteson moved to Thetford, he switched to using wood as his primary material.
He sketches daily, using an old trick that Arthur Lee taught him. He draws upward, rather than down. By doing that, he said, “You’re always seeing the paper to work against it.”
It makes you really think about the lines rather than putting the pen or pencil on an automatic downward trajectory, he said.
That attention to how he makes his work is one of the reasons that Mackay has valued collaborating with him.
“It’s been really a treat because he’s still very vibrant and one of the most intellectually clear-headed … people I’ve yet to work with,” she said.
Works by Ira and Helen Matteson are on view at BigTown Gallery in Rochester, Vt. through July 9.
Openings and Receptions
The artist Eric Van Hove, whose sculptural installation was recently seen in the Hood Museum of Art exhibition “Inventory: New Works and Conversations around African Art,” is an artist-in-residence in the Dartmouth College Department of Studio Art this semester.
Hove, who divides his time between Morocco and Belgium, also has work on view in the Jaffe-Friede Gallery in the Hopkins Center at the college through May 1. If you get a chance, go over to see his meticulously wrought-and-assembled sculptures.
Also in the Hopkins Center, in the Strauss Gallery, is the exhibition “Garlic Scapes: Drawings and Prints” by Dartmouth College department of Studio Art professor Louise Hamlin.
The Royalton Memorial Library in South Royalton will cast a spotlight on Vermont architect Louis Sheldon Newton, who is noted for his Colonial Revival buildings in the Upper Valley, and the Burlington area. Organized by Martha Knapp, of the Hartford Historical Society, and John Dumville, of the Royalton Historical Society, the show looks at the life and work of Newton, who was born in 1871 and died in 1953.
Knapp and Dumville will give a talk about Newton at the library on Wednesday, May 4, from 7 to 8 p.m. The show is on view now through June 4.
A second exhibition of art work by West Lebanon students goes on view at the Kilton Public Library this Saturday. The show runs through May 31.
Recently opened at ArtisTree Gallery in South Pomfret is a show devoted to and inspired by mud season. The exhibition continues through April 30.
Call for Artists
Randolph’s Chandler Gallery is asking artists to submit one example of recent work for its annual Area Artists Show, which will run April 30 through June 11. They’re seeking artists from Orange, Washington and Windsor counties. Works will be accepted at the gallery on Sunday, April 24 from 4 to 6 p.m.; and Monday, April 25, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. There is a $10 entrance fee to submit work. For information call Emily Crosby at 802-431-0204 or email gallery@chandler-arts.org.
Ongoing
Arabella, Windsor. The gallery exhibits works by local artists and artisans in a variety of media including jewelry, oils, acrylics, photography, watercolors, pastels and textiles.
Claremont Opera House. Paintings by David Nelson, a Dublin, N.H., artist, are on view in the exhibition “Art is Visual Philosophy,” in the John D. Bennet Atrium Gallery. The show runs through April 30.
Converse Free Library, Lyme. The collages of Barbara Newton can be seen through June 30.
Howe Library, Hanover. “Route 66 in Oklahoma — What Once Was As it is Now,” a show of photographs by Rich Perry, runs through April 27.
Library Arts Center, Newport. “Selections: Winners from the 2015 Juried Regional Exhibit” runs through April 15.
Long River Gallery and Gifts, Lyme. The Japanese-inspired works of Kathleen Swift are on view through May 2.
Main Street Museum of Art, White River Junction. “Odalesque and Other Recent Paintings,” by Daisy Rockwell, are on view.
Norwich Public Library. An exhibition of nature photographs by Mary Gerakeris runs through April 29.
Scavenger Gallery, White River Junction. Works by Hopkins, Toby Bartles, Lois Beatty and Ria Blaas are on view.
Tunbridge Public Library. “National Park Landscapes: Celebrating National Park Service Centennial 2016,” an exhibition of landscape paintings by Royalton artist Joan Hoffmann, continues through May 12.
Two Rivers Printmaking Studio, White River Junction. Vermont printmaker Lynn Newcomb exhibits her prints at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio; the show runs through April 30. Her work can also be seen at the White River Gallery in South Royalton.
White River Gallery, South Royalton. “Lynn Newcomb’s Etchings: The Power of Black Ink; Two Decades of Printmaking” is on view through Tuesday.
Norman Williams Library, Woodstock. “Vermont Is On Our Minds,” an exhibition of work by artists from Zack’s Place, continues through May 14.
Zollikofer Gallery, Hotel Coolidge, White River Junction. A show of works by students from the Center for Cartoon Studies runs through May 11.
Nicola Smith can be reached at nsmith@vnews.com.