Steve Gevurtz - Sculptor and Fine Artist /default.asp

Community News 11/10/06
Award pays tribute to ambassador of hope, service
By Craig Howard
Spokane Valley News Herald Staff Writer

"I prayed that you would always love the poor and that peace and unity would always be with you."

-- Mother Emilie Tavernier Gamelin
Foundress of the Sisters of Providence

Growing up on a farm in Missoula, Mont., Sister Loretta Marie Marceau learned the value of helping others.

Marceau's mother would extend a kind word to the less fortunate in town and make it a point to feed and clothe those who needed additional support. The consistent example of encouragement left a considerable impression on Marceau who, at 23, decided to become a Catholic nun.

Almost 70 years later, Marceau is still committed to a mission of charity. The spry 92-year-old was recently honored with an award in her name that will be presented to area residents who have made a positive difference in the community. The "Hope Award" medallion, created by local sculptor Steve Gevurtz, features a likeness of Sister Loretta and will be distributed by the regional chapter of Volunteers of America.

"We know all the Sisters of Providence have helped us," said Marilee Roloff, president and CEO of Volunteers of America of Eastern Washington and North Idaho. "But Sister Loretta has been the face of Sisters of Providence at all our meetings. She always inspired us to believe in what we were doing."

Marceau was instrumental in the development of Hope House, a women's shelter in downtown Spokane that has been facilitated by Volunteers of America for the last five-and-a-half years. Even before V.O.A. took over the shelter, Marceau helped gather valuable funds for the cause.

Roloff recalled how, in the early days, the shelter's board of directors "looked to Sister Loretta to keep their spirits high."

Lynn Everson, one of the founders of the shelter and the recipient of the inaugural "Hope Award" along with retired police officer Mike Yates, said Marceau rallied enthusiasm for the shelter when times were tough.

"Sister Loretta Marie became our standard bearer," Everson said. "She always believed it would happen. She never lost faith."

Marceau continues to stay busy with exercise and rooting for her favorite team, the Gonzaga Bulldogs. She has scaled back on some of her involvement with organizations like the National Hospital Association and the St. Joseph's Care Center, where she served on the board of directors for 18 years. She also spent 13 years in the business office at Sacred Heart Hospital. The shift, she said, "has meant more time for prayer."

Hope House continues to fulfill an important role in the community, helping women get back on their feet. Last year, the shelter assisted nearly 400 women, ranging in age from 18 to 72. Along with the main location, Hope House now features an additional 32 apartments.

When presenting Marceau with the award at a ceremony held at Emilie Court on Nov. 1, Roloff quoted a line from the poet John Milton in describing the honoree - "grace was in all her steps, dignity in her eye."

For her part, Sister Loretta gave credit to all the Sisters of Providence and reiterated the noble purpose served by places like Hope House.

"God created every one of us and He loves us all - He didn't create any junk," Marceau said. "These people are treated with real respect and for many of them, that's the first time. In any condition, they're taken in and cared for."

Along with Hope House, VOA's stable of programs includes Alexandria's House, a home for young mothers, Breakthrough for Families, designed to help at-risk youth, and Emergency Assistance, providing financial help for food, clothing and utilities. For a complete list of programs, or to find out how you can donate or volunteer to a cause, call 624-2378 or visit www.voaspokane.org.

Steve Gevurtz, a self-taught sculptor with studios in Spokane and Sandpoint, Idaho, says his yardstick for success won’t be reached until his art becomes commercially viable.

What’s commercially viable to a man who retired eight years ago as the CEO of Itronix Corp., a Spokane company he co-founded that employed 400 people when he left, might be a higher dollar figure than for many artists.

A sculptor for only a year and a half, Gevurtz already has been commissioned by Regal 1 LLC, of Spokane, to create a three-piece, $65,000 bronze shoreline display at Regal 1’s recently opened Village at Regal Pond retail complex on the South Hill. Gevurtz says he also has sold several bronze pieces for more than $10,000 each and has been commissioned by the city of Coeur d’Alene to create eight bronze donor-recognition books to be placed along the main staircase inside that city’s new library, which is under construction.

He projects that revenue for his business, A Moment in Time Fine Arts, will exceed $100,000 next year, yet his sights are set much higher.

“This is a whole new world,” he says. “I’m trying to leave my mark in a way that’s just as important as a company, product, or service. I’m serious about my sculptures and want them to stand on their own merits as fine art. I cringe at the thought of someone saying, ‘Isn’t that great for a new sculptor?’”

Gevurtz says he never even dabbled in art until 2002, when he enrolled in an art class at the Spokane Art School. His skills evolved quickly, as evidenced by the rows of portraits and other paintings he displays on the walls of three third-floor condominium units, one of which he leases, in the Minnesota Building, at 423 W. First, in downtown Spokane.

Mothers with newborns were a frequent subject of Gevurtz’s portraits early on, but he says, “I never was confident in my drawings and paintings. It was always a retired executive kind of thing. But when I began sculpting I felt like it was natural, that I was good at it.”

What he regards as a big step in his young second career is scheduled to begin next week, when The Painter’s Chair Fine Art Gallery, in Coeur d’Alene, begins selling his sculptures on consignment. Gevurtz also has pieces on consignment at the Goodworks Gallery, in downtown Spokane.

Gevurtz says he will cast between one and 40 reproductions of each piece before he literally breaks its mold.

To date, he’s cast only five of his sculptures in bronze, although he’s working on seven more that he plans to have on sale at galleries within the next three months. He also anticipates completing the bronze Village at Regal Pond project within the next few months. It will include a 5-foot-tall, 700-pound little girl and a 3-foot-tall, 300-pound little boy standing on the shore of the development’s pond. “Drifting” a few feet away on the pond will be a 44-inch-high, 40-pound bronze sailboat, with a canvas sail.

When creating larger pieces such as the 5-foot tall girl, Gevurtz uses rigid foam insulation, rather than clay to work with initially, because clay is so heavy. He glues the insulation together, carves it into a desired shape, and covers the insulation with clay that he then molds.

Those clay-covered sculptures typically are cut into pieces at the joints of the subject’s body at a bronze foundry where the intricate lost-wax bronze casting technique converts fragile clay sculptures into rugged bronze sculptures. Gevurtz says all of his bronze pieces are cast at Cire-Perdue Casting Inc., in Hayden.

In the lost-wax process, multiple coats of liquid rubber are brushed on the pieces of the clay sculpture, then the rubber is covered with plaster to ensure the rubber maintains the shape of the piece. The rubber hardens, the mold formed by the clay is removed, and liquid wax is poured into the rubber mold, which retains the precise shape and detail of the clay. After the wax hardens, the rubber mold is removed and the wax is dipped into slurry, a mixture of clay suspended in liquid, says Gevurtz. Once the wax is dipped in slurry, fine sand is dusted onto the pieces of the sculpture and they are dipped in slurry again. That process is repeated several times, with sand of increasingly large granules used in the process, he says.

When the foundry deems the sand-covered pieces to be ready, they’re fired in a kiln at a high temperature, causing the wax to melt and solidifying the exterior shell made of slurry and sand. The bronze is poured into that shell. After cooling, the shell is chipped away, and the pieces of the bronze art are welded back together.

Gevurtz says welding rods used to weld the pieces back together in the final sculpture are cast from the same batch of bronze that’s poured into the final mold, ensuring that the welds, when properly applied, won’t leave any marks on the finished product.

Admittedly anything but a starving artist, Gevurtz attacks his sculptures with a passion. He estimates he works about 60 hours a week in his two studios, one of which occupies 800 square feet in the Minnesota Building, while the other occupies about 400 square feet in the basement of his home on the shore of Lake Pend Oreille, in Sandpoint. He says he spends as much as 250 hoursworking on one piece, and strives to capture the essence of his subjects by working with live models and with photographs.

“I want to accurately record the discipline of the subject matter,” he says. “I want a trained ballerina to look at the piece I made of Mimi Ewers (a professional Spokane ballerina) and say, ‘That’s right.’”

One of the seven sculptures he currently is working on is a representation of 20-year-old Ferris High School graduate Nathan Driftmeyer, who’s a dancer for the Denmark Ballet Co. Driftmeyer posed for more than 50 hours in Gevurtz’s Spokane studio, allowing the artist to work on a piece called “Reach,” in which Driftmeyer, from a sitting position, is depicted stretching out one arm. Gevurtz says he’s already invested more than 250 hours in the piece and basically is satisfied with it, but won’t call it complete until he’s “captured the story” in Driftmeyer’s face. “I don’t know how long it will take,” he says.

Gevurtz says he understands the importance of marketing his art, rather than waiting for customers to come to him.

“The art will take you part way, but to do retail you have to go out and let folks know you are serious,” he says. By developing a Web site and entering national sculpting competitions, he hopes to make his sculptures well known and soon to be represented in galleries in the Southwest and on the East Coast. But he doesn’t plan to stop there.

“I’ll walk the streets of New York City,” he says. “It (success) isn’t going to come to me.”

To achieve the success he desires, Gevurtz says his works will need to be limited releases that capture the passion and composition buyers want. He stresses the importance of convincing buyers that he’s a professional artist, with a professional-quality product to sell.

Many of Gevurtz’s initial pieces have been of professional dancers, but he anticipates exploring many other subjects in the future.

“A lot of artists get a style and maintain it,” he says. “I don’t want to be that way. I’ll stay dedicated to getting my pieces right, but I don’t want to make them all the same” subject matter.

Originally from Portland, Ore., Gevurtz was director of organizational development for the Washington, D.C.-based Marriott Corp. for seven years and later co-founded a business consulting and market research firm, called Gevurtz, Griggs & Anderson, in Portland. In 1980, he became senior vice president of Itron Inc., the Spokane-based developer of automated meter-reading technology. He left there in 1992 to help spin off Itronix, which makes rugged laptop computers, and retired from that position in 1998.

He says his former role as a CEO helped prepare him as a sculptor “because I was constantly looking for what’s unique about people, both customers and employees. As a CEO, my job was to capture the uniqueness of people and put them together like a puzzle so they would work well. In sculpting, I try to capture what is unique, different, and powerful about the person I’m sculpting.”

Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at rockyw@spokanejournal.com.

The 5-year-old girl stands with her arms raised in excitement. The boy, also 5, squats next to the girl at the water's edge with his arms outstretched in the direction of the sailboat that floats out of reach. The life-size, three-piece bronze sculpture is titled "Summer Breeze" and encapsulates the carefree feel of the first days of summer.

"My goal was to incorporate land, water and wind into one sculpture. I wanted to capture the carefree spirit of children playing in the summer breeze," said Spokane Valley sculptor Steve Gevurtz.

The piece took about a year to complete. Ravyn Sargent and Cameron Connelly served as the models. Gevurtz set the kids loose with a remote control boat at the pond and snapped pictures. They wore costumes, circa 1930, from the Civic Theater to capture simpler times.

Gevurtz wanted the sailboat to move realistically and his goal was accomplished with the help of metal artist Hazen Audel, who designed the underwater mechanism for the boat that has real sails on it.

The sculpture, commissioned by Tombari Properties of Spokane, sits permanently on the edge of Regal Pond at the Village, behind Twigs Bistro and Martini Bar, at 4320 S. Regal St. The sculpture is in honor of all the children served by the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery and was unveiled recently during a fundraising event for the nursery.

The fundraising event featured soft jazz, wine and hors d'oeuvres as well as a showing of some of Gevurtz's other works – figurative sculptures that are filled with life and movement.

"There is a story and a feeling behind each of them," said Gevurtz. "When people look at my work, I want them to 'get it,' not in words but feelings. I want the texture and form to speak to them."

A retired CEO, Gevurtz, 60, did not begin his artistic endeavors until about five years ago. That's when he began taking painting and drawing classes in art schools and centers in New York, Los Angeles, Coeur d'Alene and the Spokane area. "I was training for something," he said. That something was sculpting, which he taught himself and dove into passionately about two years ago.

Gevurtz spends up to 40 hours a week in his studio at First and Washington downtown. There, the walls are decorated with his lifelike portraits and studies of the human body. He also has a studio in Sandpoint and occasionally works in his Northwood home.

Creating a bronze sculpture is a long, expensive process and includes a model or an idea, the initial clay sculpture, a rubber mold, wax, ceramic, a firing, liquid bronze and finishing work.

Already he has sold nearly 20 pieces and is making a name for himself as an artist. His work is displayed at the Painter's Chair in Coeur d'Alene and the Good Works Gallery in Spokane. He also has private showings.

Spokane Valley Harald

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