Richard Stauffacher and his etchings

By Joseph C. Neal

 The State Fish Hatchery at Centerton in Benton County sits in the middle of old prairies once common in northwest  Arkansas. Grasses, ponds, scattered post oaks, and low conical mounds typical of prairies dominate the scene. Catfish,  bream, bass, and trout are reared in a series of ponds fed by a natural artesian spring. This is the hatchery's official  business.

Unofficially, the hatchery hosts migrating flocks of white pelicans, sparrows, sandpipers, ducks, geese, gulls and terns. These birds nest well to the north of Arkansas, all across the great north country of Alaska, Canada, the northern US. During their stop over at Centerton, they tank up on insects and fish, and then migrate on south, to the Gulf of Mexico and South America.

I'm thinking about Centerton, and a dozen other beautiful, ecologically significant places in northwest Arkansas because on my wall hangs a hand-tinted etching, "Savannah Sparrows" by Fayetteville's own Richard Stauffacher. The small bird's striped and streaked patterns of brown, yellow, black, and buff-white blend with the weedy stalks and leaves of smartweed, an aquatic plant that grows profusely at Centerton.

Most of us know big pieces of life's ecological puzzle, like bald eagles and seagulls. Many of the smaller pieces are harder to see. We miss their potential richness. Mostly we do not know that savannah sparrows are as typical of the old prairie grasslands as were the 19th century herds of bison. In the etching, two birds perch expectantly on twisted stalks. It's an intimate look, since the birds are deep in the vegetation, well hidden from view. Well, not from everyone's view.
Over the years, Richard's etchings have captured a host of creatures and natural environments of northwest Arkansas. Just a few examples: nesting great blue herons on the Illinois River in early spring and maidenhair ferns dripping over lichen-encrusted sandstones. He etched a small flock of white-throated sparrows and dark-eyed juncos in the snow. Bobwhite quail in an old field, flocks of duck-like coots among lotus pads at Lake Fayetteville, a single dog day cicada on the bark of an oak tree. He's also been inspired by the wildflowers that arise, Lazarus-like, each spring from the forest floor: jack-in-the-pulpit, trout lily, and the majestic unfurling of hickory buds.
Whether we are aware of it or not, these are moments in our lives, too. Moments from the stream of our times.

There is an old joke about the artist who lures a young woman to his room by promising to show her his etchings. The joke may date all the way back to the 16th century or even further, when artists discovered that an image could be etched into a metal plate using acids.

Once the image is etched, thick ink is smeared on the plate, and then wiped off. Ink remains within the etched portions, outlining the picture. The plate is pressed firmly onto paper. Several plates and different types of ink may be used to create complex images. Printed etchings can be hand colored in a variety of ways, using paints and pencils.

Of course, the question must be asked: why go to all the trouble? Why not just draw a picture and be done with it? Good question. The drawn picture is a one-of-a-kind object. For an artist to make a living, it must be sold for a high price. That's fine if the artwork achieves the fame of Van Gogh, but even Van Goghs had little commercial value during the life of that artist.

On the other hand, what if that picture could be produced in a small edition, say 100-300 copies? Since each was printed, colored, and numbered, each would be the unique work of the artist. Each print could be sold for a modest price. Fine art then becomes available to the many, rather than just the few.

Back in the mid-1980s, Richard sold hand-colored pen and ink drawings at Fayetteville's Farmer's Market. One of these was an image approximately 5 by 7" featuring a silver-spotted skipper perched on a rose vervain. While impressionistic in rendering, the inspiration was identifiable to species. Skippers are among our commonest butterflies; the vervain does well just about anywhere there's sunlight. There's beauty in life's commonplace realities.

This picture features a disciplined attention to detail. It projects a sense of landscape enlivened by the unique and the particular. I have wondered about the sources of this quality. He does not hold a degree in biology, but biologists are enthusiastic about his work. The spirit promoting this style has something to do with his growing up.

If you visit his home in Fayetteville, you will note a dog, a cat, a bluebird house, fruit trees, vegetable garden, several sheds, an old van. In other words, typically and comfortably Arkansas. But he did not grow up here. He was born in Russellville in 1948, but almost immediately his family returned to Africa. He grew up among Africans, missionaries, and a wild fauna and flora most of us know only from documentaries broadcast on AETN.

His parents, Gladys and Claudon Stauffacher, were missionaries. Claudon's father John had gone to Africa as a young man in 1907, also as a missionary. From shortly after Richard's birth until 1960, the family pursued their calling as ministers and social workers in the old Belgian Congo, leaving there only because of chaos accompanying independence. The Stauffachers then moved to Kenya where Richard finished his youth. While kids in the US were growing up with Elvis, the Beatles, and Mickey Mantle, Richard was growing with the Masai people of Kenya's highlands, with elephants and leopards, zebras, impalas. Richard's mother chronicled the family's life and work in Faster beats the drum (168 pages, African Inland Mission, Pearl River, NY 1978).

Because his parent's work was remote from regular schools, Richard was educated in boarding schools in the Congo and Kenya, spending stretches of his youth away from family. He was required by these circumstances to find his balance in a vast landscape. He took a correspondence course in taxidermy, shot birds and other small animals, stuffed and preserved them. These are typically pursuits of a scientist in the making, a modern day Audubon, or at least an active mind concerned with nature's particulars. He learned anatomy, color, and form at first hand. He learned to work by himself, to be creative in an environment that would be insufferably lonely for people with a more regular growing up.
Richard returned to the US in 1965. After service in the US Navy, he earned his BS in Fine Art from John Brown University in Siloam Springs (1975). He began producing work like the skipper and vervain pen-and-ink, but it was apparent that it would be hard to sell enough of them at $5-$10 a piece to make a living.

Besides selling his drawings on the Square, Richard was framing art for Wendell Cullers at the Art Emporium on Block Street and for Jay Emerson at the Frame Place on Dickson. During this time he met several people who would have a tremendous influence on his development. Printmaker Ed Bernstein, then in the U of A Art Department, allowed Richard use of his studio and equipment. Another influence was Susan Raymond.

Susan, who at this time was a regular at the War Eagle Arts & Crafts Fair, owned a small, professional quality etching press that she used to produce limited editions of her whimsical Ozarks country-inspired drawings. She owned a farm in Madison County. Richard made a trip out there to learn how the press worked. She also handed him a catalogue from Graphic Chemical and Ink in Chicago, the standard supplier for etching supplies. The rest, as they say, is history.

Richard went from the one-of-a-kind drawings like the skipper and vervain to editions turned out on Susan's press. One of these early etchings was a brown tone of a cloudy wing butterfly among dead leaves and twigs on the floor of the forest. While the etching measures only approximately 4 by 5 inches, it encompasses a landscape enlivened by particulars, attractively organized in a small space.

In this milieu of frame shops and working artists, Richard's work was introduced to Ria Foster of Island International Artists, based on Guemes Island in northern Puget Sound, Washington. Foster and her representatives from I.I.A. travel to galleries all over the country with an artist's work.

Seeing Richard's potential, Foster helped Richard buy a large press so that he could move up from the compact format of Susan's press. With more potential to make a living, Richard expanded his production. He rented studio space in the Gregory Center.

Foster works with many artists who, like Richard, have learned to draw, but who, unlike Richard, lack technical skills in etching and printing. In Richard's etchings, Ria saw not only the work of an artist with a love of nature, but a highly skilled craftsman converting interesting ideas into technically accomplished etchings. She shipped to Richard's studio drawings by other artists so Richard could make plates of the drawings. She also sometimes shipped him the artists themselves for a teaching session.

In 1986, Richard moved from Fayetteville to Guemes Island where he assumed the role of master printer for Ria's Black Raven Press. But beautiful as it was on an island in Puget Sound, it was never home. In 1993, he returned, this time not to an apartment, but a small house on a few acres in the Mount Comfort area of Fayetteville. Again, this was in collaboration with Susan Raymond, who found the place and bought it with Richard with a plan to build her own house there in the future (it is nearing completion, now, in the year 2000).
By the way, the folks who own the farm next door are Wendell and Linda Cullers. The small house barely held Richard, so the big press went into the Culler's basement, where Linda Cullers, also an artist, has her studio. Richard was 45 that year.

 One of Richard's most recent etchings is "Rocks in Spring." You've been to bluff lines like this if you've hiked in the  Ozarks. It's a spot where the old multi-layered rock strata have been eroding for hundreds of millions of years. It's too  rough for commercial development. Unfettered nature has been allowed to take her course. Grapevines, fence lizards,  and small secretive snakes have run of the place. Cave-like rock overhangs may once have sheltered Native Americans  from a snowstorm. Deer and bears pass through this country.

Even with its frenetic pace of growth, Fayetteville is still blessed with such places. It could be the old Fayetteville Spring right in town. Could be Lake Wilson Park, or atop Washington Mountain in Finger Park. Could be in the Ozark National Forest at Lake Wedington. Many such places grace the Buffalo River country.

In this etching, lichens are silver-gray, moss emerald green, massive sandstone outcrops worn and rounded. The rich tangle of trees and vines is essentially leafless. Rooted in thin soils atop the rocks is a single serviceberry (or sarvis) tree, small and generally overlooked in an understory among better-known trees, the dogwoods and redbuds. It must be March, perhaps middle of the month, because the serviceberry has burst into a snowstorm of delicate white blossoms, enlivening a winter background of gray. Serviceberries bloom well ahead of redbuds and dogwoods.
"Rocks in Spring" contains many more details when compared to pieces from the 1980s. We easily share his interest in this otherwise nondescript tree that now, in March, so dominates the landscape. Technically speaking, the etching's format is large at 12 by 18 inches. The lines are complex, rich, varied, and layered. The hand coloring is refined, elegant, and delicate. Taken in the whole, "Rocks in Spring" fetches the viewer out for a last visit with winter, a first commune with spring.

 The most striking of the birds that nest in northwest Arkansas are great blue herons. You've seen these tall, long-legged wading birds out there along the river where they fish for frogs and minnows. It's perhaps less well known that they build their platform nests of sticks in the tops of tall, mature trees like sycamores and cottonwoods in river bottoms. And they are among the first birds initiating the nesting season, often fixing up an old nest or starting a new one early in the year, even in February, long before the leaf-out that will hide the nests.

So much for biology.

I'm thinking about great blue herons while looking at one of Richard's earlier etchings, "Heronry." Compared to "Rocks in Spring," this one is relatively simple. It's a gray tone featuring a big sky, treetops, and one bird in flight, plus several on nests. The biology is covered. But there's something larger, the essential theme in all of his art, from the beginning.
Richard's etchings embody an environmental ethic that is only subtly political. By that I mean his work doesn't have the hard edge one construes as supportive of Republicans, Democrats, or Greens. Yet, anyone with a genuine love for the outdoors—what I'd term environmentalism—is going to be drawn in. Taken in one way, this etching of herons nesting may be construed as an impressionistic image of nature's annual cycle, and nothing more. But look closer.
The grove of trees is fishing the sky. They've hooked into something special indeed--tied into a big one--the cycle of life.
 

Joseph C. Neal is a native of western Arkansas. He is coauthor of Arkansas Birds (U of A Press, 1986) and author of the general history in History of Washington County Arkansas (Shiloh Museum, 1989). Comments may be addressed to Joe at joecneal@juno.com.