The Artist and his Works: A review essay by Richard Warch
Connoisseurs of the sculptural creations of John Palmquist may plausibly assume that he has been inspired by California artist Woods Davy. That would be a reasonable conjecture, but in fact, compared to Palmquist, Davy is a relative novice as far as rock art is concerned. It is true that Davy's art appeared on the market before Palmquist's, but the more salient point is that Palmquist has spent years-indeed, has spent decades almost too numerous to mention-preparing to create the sculptural forms for which he has just recently gained such wide notoriety. He is no -- if readers will pardon the pun -- Johnny-Come-Lately when it comes to working with rocks.
Palmquist, the son of a Lutheran pastor, grew up with a deep and abiding appreciation for the wonders of creation. As a youth, growing up in Marquette (the Queen City of the North) along the shores of Lake Superior in Michigan's noted -- and at times ridiculed -- Upper Peninsula (hereafter, "da UP"), Palmquist spent countless hours playing with rocks. What first began as a childish preoccupation with seeing how far he could skip stones across the lake (a pastime that led to one of his first "scientific" discoveries: i.e., spherical rocks did not skip as easily as flat ones) developed into a more profound appreciation for their varied shapes and compositions. As a youngster -- albeit a precocious youngster -- he did not yet know the proper designations or geological origins of the rocks he found along the rocky coast of Superior, but in time he would come to know those designations and many other pieces of geological wisdom, which, if truth be told, he will share with (and/or inflict on) friends and traveling companions at the drop of the proverbial hat (in this particular instance, a Tilley hat, about which Palmquist has also been known to wax rhapsodic for interminable periods of time, though his riffs on golf make his geological and Tilley hat discourses seem like reticence).
Whereas Davy appears to work with rocks that are merely big and round, Palmquist selects the materials for his sculptures with greater care and sensitivity. And whereas Davy apparently wants to create works of art only suitable for patrons with enormous interior spaces or large tracts of open lawn (to say nothing of deep pockets), Palmquist seeks to produce sculptural forms on a more intimate scale. His sculptures, therefore, while commanding prices commensurate with the creative energy and exemplary talent he brings to each piece, are still affordable when compared to the exorbitant prices that Davy has the audacity to ask, and can thus find a place in the confines of the homes and yards of collectors of more modest means.
While Davy could not tell you -- and, as best one can tell, does not care -- if a particular rock is quartz, mica, or feldspar, cannot produce even a kindergarten interpretation of plate tectonics, and is clueless when it comes to differentiating igneous and sedimentary rocks, Palmquist is the polar opposite. A graduate of Augustana College (with perhaps the most beautiful campus in America, one that invites and indeed provokes awe and reverence for the natural world), and a noted PUG (about which he will also regale with great enthusiasm), Palmquist went on to obtain a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Iowa, taught for twenty-eight years at Lawrence, and has been elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. He thus possesses an expertise that Davy (and other artists using stone as a medium) cannot match. Palmquist does not just pick any old rock for his art. He selects only rocks about which he can lecture interminably, so that collectors of his art also become, perforce, recipients of geological instruction.
Though he has traveled extensively, at home and abroad, on his yearly sabbaticals from Lawrence University and has thus seen and collected geological specimens from around the world, Palmquist has most frequently chosen material from his beloved UP to use in his work. As he himself has written, these stones are derived from the Precambrian rocks of Ontario and the native Michigan bedrock and the shapes they develop come from original fractures. Most significantly for how they are placed and juxtaposed in Palmquist's work, the stones have been rounded during their varied histories: by sculpting in flowing water, by glacial transport, and lastly by the repeated pounding of the surf along the shores of da UP. Needless to say, the rocks so transformed over millennia offer a rich array of forms and types, but Palmquist only selects specimens that are beautiful objects in themselves, and have a shape, texture, fabric, and especially color that make them pleasing to the eye. These variations in color and patterns of veins are central features that Palmquist seeks when he is selecting and collecting the rocks, but come into play most particularly during his imaginative and sensitive positioning of the stones in each sculpture.
In assembling the stones, Palmquist strives for simplicity and balance to achieve a result that transcends the materials, resulting in a Zen-like quality developed from the arrangements, which encourage contemplation and reflection. His work is abstract yet organic, revealing a tension and precariousness in the finished product that suggests a fluid balancing act between and among the stones themselves. While most of Palmquist's works are "fixed" once assembled, the artist has also created a few works that permit viewers to manipulate the rocks into different configurations (see, for example, Zen Stack II), providing an interactive experience that enables the viewer to "participate" in creating and recreating the piece into various forms.