The Beautiful Unknown
Charles Steckler: Dioramas
November 27, 2026 – January 10, 2027
A showcase feature and part of our Small Works exhibition
Artist Reception
Friday, November 27, 5-8pm
I call these boxes dioramas because they remind me of those shoebox scenes I made in 2nd grade for social studies classes and book reports, scenes like “The Rainforest,” and “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth,” or “An Eskimo Village” with glistening igloos made of sugar cubes. Those were large worlds that I learned to fit into small spaces. I am a bricoleur; collage is my method. My materials are modest: household junk, things too worthless to save, which I save and reuse. I look out for connecting patterns. Ideas come to me in a process of arrangement and discovery. My game is to turn this frivolous stuff into pieced-together stories and expressions of my inner world. My goal is to create intimate works suffused with atmosphere, nostalgia, humor, and the memory of childhood’s simple delights.
~ Charles Steckler
“I am a bricoleur; collage is my method. My materials are familiar and modest: household detritus, found discards, things too worthless to save, which I salvage and reincarnate.”
“I look for correspondences among these materials on my worktable. Ideas emerge and connections are made during a process of arrangement, synthesis and discovery. My game is to turn this frivolous stuff into expressions of my inner world. “
“In the container’s empty interior I can stage private universes: nature habitats, urban vistas in perspective, monuments to historic moments, meteorological displays, replicas, curiosities, peepshows of the sublime and the ridiculous.”
Charles Steckler
For a long time she stood by the window, 2003
mixed media assemblage
7.5” x 9” x 2.5”
$450
“My goal is to stop time and conjure intimate works that beguile by invoking the poetic spell of childhood.”
Charles Steckler has exhibited nationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions and has designed stage sets for nearly 200 productions. He has been a Yaddo fellow, an associate at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, a resident artist at the Vermont Studio Center, a Prix de Rome finalist and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. He received his B.A. from Queens College in New York and his M.F.A. from Yale University. He is emeritus Professor of Theater and Designer-in-Residence at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
Mitchell•Giddings Fine Arts offers contemporary art in a variety of media, featuring emerging and established artists.
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