Stuart Schechter
Plush
Trains can evoke a variety of emotions. For example, while on the one hand we associate model trains with children and play, real trains have a haunting history. Immigrants built the railroads in the United States under horrible conditions, and trains transported people to concentration camps during the Holocaust. These conflicting feelings are expressed by Stuart Schechter’s Plush. The pleasant innocence of youth appears in the stuffed animals and the larger form of the baby, while the penned-in toys and their menacing actions suggest the darker side of trains.
Stuart Schechter and Ralph Helmick (whose installation, Fourteenth Way, also appears in Trainscape) have been collaborating on public art projects since 1994. Helmick is an artist and teacher, while Schechter is a rocket scientist by training and an artist by vocation. They employ all of their talents as well as those of their studio assistants to create innovative works, switching back and forth between cutting-edge technology and traditional artistic techniques. The artists’ shared interest in the mechanics of visual perception unites their large body of work.
Stuart Schechter would like to thank studio assistants Nicholas Farnham, Andrea Qampitella, Neal and Susan Heffron, and Jacqueline Thomson.
Image: Stuart Schechter, Plush, (detail), 2007, Lent by the Artist