This exhibition of wood and stone sculpture comes at the conclusion of the artist’s Tiffany Foundation Grant for 1962–1963. The freshness of the work gives evidence that influences were positive and that new directions are operational.

Carved planes with curled edges rather than curved surfaces meet, parry, then join at acute or obtuse angles. The whole is then rocked in space to a point of delicate balance. Walnut, pocket-riddled camphor wood, and mottled alabaster provide a variety of media for these expansive figures. In one walnut piece, Saarinan, two planes are tipped to each other and share a common axis, which is articulated on the surface by a crease in the wood along the common pole. Thus what might otherwise visually topple, holds firm because the internal order and structure is made manifest on the surface, much as a crack in the earth’s surface betrays an inner stress.

The comfort of discipline’s restraining hand is felt in Joyce Schumacher’s sculpture. Despite tremendous energy and vitality, these pieces will never explode esthetically or topple visually. Stone is, after all, massive, and wood irrevocably possesses direction and plane. And this the artist does not forget.

—Virginia Allen