Photographs by Terry Roberts. Courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum.
The 78-year-old artist Stan Smokler will follow his exhibit, “Steel in Flux,” with an art sale to assist with his medical expenses.
For almost 50 years, first in his native New York and since 1999 in the Brandywine Valley, the sculpture artist Stan Smokler has made a career of reimagining existing pieces of metal and re-shaping them into striking works that seem at once expressive yet spare, always picking at the imagination of the viewer. Many of these works will be showcased in a new indoor-outdoor exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum titled, “Stan Smokler: Steel in Flux,” beginning June 25 and lasting until September 11.
For Smokler’s many friends, patrons and students at his instructional workshops, it will be an exciting yet sad showcase, as the 78-year-old artist is now suffering from a debilitating disease. And to help defray his medical expenses, the exhibition will be followed by a celebration and art sale on Saturday, October 1, at Smokler’s studio at 270 Marshall Bridge Road along the Red Clay Creek, where there will be food, wine and music to accompanying the sale. 
Also during the exhibit, the museum is offering a class and demonstration in metal art at Smokler’s studio on Saturday, July 16, led by Lele Galer, a welding student of Smokler’s, who will be assisted by Mike Kahler. The fee for the four-hour tutorial and lunch is $105 for museum members and $120 for non-members.
Smokler received an undergraduate degree in studio art at the University of Pittsburgh and his MFA from Pratt Institute. His work has been exhibited in many venues and is part of the collections at various museums.
“Stan Smokler’s celebrated steel sculptures continue the trajectory of modernist abstraction,” says the museum’s curator of contemporary art, Margaret Winslow. “This Distinguished Artist Series Exhibition showcases the breadth of Smokler’s experimentation in form and metal.”
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