SHELBURNE, VT.- This week, Shelburne Museum installed its newest permanent collection acquisition, Faceted Rock, by Vermont-based sculptor David Stromeyer. This large-scale steel sculpture has a prominent place on the museum’s grounds near the Meeting House building and joins the museum’s outdoor sculpture collection.

For more than five decades, Stromeyer has created sculptures whose graphic forms, saturated colors, and complex, balanced compositions seem to defy steel’s material limits. Despite the weight of their materials and construction—including welded, cold bent, half-ton steel plates—many of Stromeyer’s sculptures play with space and perception; they seem to defy gravity, appearing to float and extend upwards effortlessly in the landscape.

“We are honored to add this stunning monumental work by David Stromeyer to Shelburne Museum’s collection. Both in scale and how the work evokes a sense of wonder about the environment, Faceted Rock is right at home on the museum campus,” said Thomas Denenberg, John Wilmerding Director and CEO of Shelburne Museum. “I would like to thank David for his inspired creativity and Todd Lockwood for his support of our outdoor sculpture program.”

Faceted Rock is the first in a series of large-scale sculptures informed by the artist’s two-year exploration of a single Vermont fieldstone. “It represents, in all kinds of ways, almost spiritually, exploring [this field stone’s] density and shape, etcetera,” Stromeyer explained.

The 46 facets of this monolith feature a metallic paint that fractures natural light across its bold geometry, highlighting its abstract form. Epitomizing Stromeyer’s expressive and technical dexterity working with steel, Faceted Rock embodies the soul and identity of place and maker.

David Stromeyer (born 1946) is an American abstract sculptor who is best known for his large-scale, outdoor, painted steel sculptures. Stromeyer attended Dartmouth College where he skied competitively and continued his study of mathematics. He graduated with a degree in Studio Art, and went on to study film at UCLA. In 1970, Stromeyer purchased a 200-acre former dairy farm in Northern Vermont’s Cold Hollow Mountains, 10 miles from the Canada–US border. It was there that he began to work on larger, more architectural
sculptures. In 2014, Stromeyer co-founded Cold Hollow Sculpture Park, which became a
non-profit organization in 2018.


Stromeyer’s work can be found in the Smithsonian American Art Museum; deCordova Sculpture Park and Art Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Overland Park, Kansas; Strathmore Hall Sculpture Garden in Bethesda, Maryland; Cornell University, Plattsburgh State University, and in corporate and private collections across the country. Stromeyer’s book Art Making on the Land was published in 2021.