Geoffrey Koetsch participated in For Art's Sake's local show this winter at the Old Bromfield. Geoffrey was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1941. His father was in finance but his passion was working with his hands in the woodshop. His mother was a primary schoolteacher who loved the theater and the arts. His sister Nancy, also an artist, lives in Colorado. When he was eight years old the family moved to Milwaukee. "I caught a glimpse of my future in the arts when my mother took me at age 13 to Taliesen, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home in Spring Green Wisconsin. My mother could be brazen when her mind was set on something so she walked right up and knocked on Wright’s door and asked if the Master was in. The apprentice explained that Mr. Wright would not be able to see us (although he did sign our first edition of his Autobiography), and offered to give us a tour of the house. The architect’s brilliant organization of light, space, and materials left a lasting impression on me."

"For better or worse, I read Wright’s autobiography as a teenager- pretty heady stuff-and I decided I would live my life as though I were a genius, even though, as it turns out, I am not one. My niche in high school was the Drama Club. A friend wrote in my yearbook "See you on Broadway, Geoff". I majored in theater at the University of Wisconsin in the early 60's. In my junior year I dated a dance student who introduced me to contemporary dance. Merced Cunningham was at his peak then, as was Alwin Nikolais. I was stunned by the power of the human body as an expressive medium." It was while hitchhiking through Europe in 1967 that he had his second art epiphany: "I stumbled into the Brancusi studio-- installed in its entirety just as he had left it--in the old Paris Museum Modern Art at the Trocadero. Once again I was mesmerized, as at Taliesen, by a total environment of light and space, form and materials, lived in by an artist."

After receiving his undergraduate degree in theater, he decided on a career in visual art and in 1967 got an MFA from the University of Illinois. He moved to Boston and began teaching at the Art Institute of Boston (now the Art Institute at Lesley University). "I rented a storefront studio in Jamaica Plain and started doing figure sculpture, something for which I had d no training because the figure was not systematically taught in art schools in those days. My interest in the figure came from two sources: modern dance and a trend in fashion photography toward ultra-thin models in tense, angular poses. Taking up the figure was risky because minimalism and conceptualism were in vogue then and the arts community ignored figurative art."He lost his studio in the early 70’s and was forced to abandon his figure studies. He moved to Paris and eked out a living writing art reviews for the Paris Metro. During his Paris years he took up photography and studied the European art scene.

Back in Boston he continued writing and photography for a few years, then turned back to sculpture—not the figurative work of the early 70’s—but to kinetic sculpture. "I teamed up with the painter Kirby Scudder to found The Theater of Kinetic Sculpture (World Sculpture Racing) a project that combined kinetic sculpture and performance. The group toured nationally and internationally until it was disbanded in 1987.In the eighties I was also the co-director of The Metropolitan Artists and Poets, an alternative art space located in a loft in Boston’s North End. The group was dedicated to experimental word/image collaborations."

At the end of the decade, he began the study and practice of Yoga--"its introspective poses became a leitmotif for my recent work, the archetypes of mental and physical discipline." In 1986 he married Elizabeth Rotter. After a trip to Japan in the mid 90's he took up the study of Zen Buddhism under the guidance of Daien Hifu—a genial entrepreneur, inventor, and Rinzai Zen priest--at the Wild Goose Zendo in Concord Massachusetts.

When asked why he makes art Geoffrey explains, "Introspective by nature, I knew in my first year at the University of Wisconsin that I was destined for the life of the mind. Although I didn't know at first in which discipline my ideas would take shape, I knew that the University was a place where mind stuff happened and that it would be my home. The function of art is to try to get a fix on life—to give shape to the flux of life, to try to make sense of it and condense it into concrete form and perhaps as a byproduct live life more fully. Art, in short, is the residue of the examined life. My cohort is composed of those others for whom bare material existence is not enough. My ideal in art is to be in conversation with the great minds, past and present, who inspire me, fill me with awe, and give me the keys to a greater understanding of life. If I set Everest as my goal perhaps I will get to base camp and that will be enough. When one sets out to shape ideas into large space-eating sculptures there can be little thought of a 'market.' The only people who buy this kind of work are museums and top-level collectors, a tiny market. Precious few artists ever get there. The play of ideas is a high-risk game and only the very best rise to the top. A condition of my path in art is that speculation on whether or not there will be a buyer for a work cannot determine what I make. As John F. Kennedy said "Be true to yourself and let the cards fall were they may."

Geoffrey currently lives and works in Harvard Massachusetts with his wife Elizabeth who is a graphic designer and principal of Studio-e Design in Concord and his 15 year old son Nikolaus. His older son, Julien, is an animator living in Brooklyn.To see more of Geoffrey's work, visit his website at www.koetsch.com.