Shifting Gears

At age 40, Thomas Ostenberg traded in his comfortable banking career for art school. Now he creates sculptures that reflect his life of risk and excitement. 

By CHERIAN GEORGE

PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUGLAS MERRIAM

THE NAME OF A STANFORD MBA can be found engraved at the entrance of one technology company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. Given how many business school alumni/ae have made their mark in Silicon Valley, this may seem unremarkable. Except this particular name is not where you’d expect to find it. It’s not on Network Appliance’s list of founders, board members, or executives. Instead, it’s outside the main building, on a 10-foot-tall sculpture purchased by the firm. The bronze piece depicts a man doing a handstand on the back of a bucking bull. The sculptor’s signature is etched in a rounded, childlike hand: “Ostenberg.”

Thomas Ostenberg, MBA ’75, was once a banker. But after 15 years in finance, he pulled off a career move as audacious as the gymnastics performed by the bronze figures he would later sculpt. In 1990, at the age of 40, he turned his back on a $200,000 consultancy practice, tossed his Madrid apartment and his Porsche convertible, and headed to art school.

He had always been consumed by what he’d seen in museums, but the creative end was so new to him, he was stumped when the college asked to see his portfolio. Investment portfolios he understood. But an artist’s portfolio? It would be the first of many steps in the remolding of his life.

One day last summer, 11 years and a world away from that fateful move, we meet the banker-turned-artist on a Native American reservation in New Mexico. He has come there to do some work at Shidoni, a foundry where artists have their sculptures cast in bronze. Many sculptors leave this difficult process entirely to the foundry’s skilled artisans. Ostenberg prefers to pitch in.

We find him at the controls of a sandblasting cabinet, which is roaring like a vacuum cleaner. His tousled, graying blond head peers in through its rectangular window, and his arms are inserted into two holes in the machine. Several minutes later, he is done. He opens the door of the cabinet and extracts a thigh-high sculpture. When he places it on the floor, it gives off a thunk and a cloud of dust. The artist doubles over with an exuberant sneeze. “Excuse me!”

Introductions over (his fiancée, Caroline, is also present; as for the piece, he calls it “A Notion of Consonance”), he dips the statue into a vat of chemical solution from which rises a foul, sulfuric odor and then leaves it out to dry. He explains that he has just removed its original, dark green patina at the request of the gallery where it is to go on sale. Later he will pick up a brush and a propane blowtorch to apply the lighter green patina that the gallery has asked for. It is one of the colors he regularly works with, so he doesn’t mind changing it, he says.

It pays to keep the customers satisfied. To see how much is at stake, you need only to travel down a country road a few miles south of Shidoni to the city of Santa Fe. New Mexico’s state capital is an art-lover’s mecca, with galleries on almost every street downtown. There, the elegant Peyton Wright Gallery stocks several Ostenbergs. In the garden stands “In Pursuit of a Clearer Understanding,” a trio of slender, 6-foot-tall figures with impossibly long gaits, each atop a flat, wheeled cart. A catalog informs you that it would cost $75,000 to take this sculpture home.

“Above Conflict,” the piece whose clone stands outside the Network Appliance building, is also available. It is from an edition of seven and is priced at $100,000. In Peyton Wright’s attic are several miniature pieces, small enough to sit on your palm. They look like toys until you feel their solid weight. These cost just a few hundred dollars. If size matters, however, try this 9-foot-tall creation: a man balancing on one hand atop a surprised-looking horse, which itself stands on a wheel resting on a pedestal. For one of an edition of eight, write a check for $100,000. Its title: “But, I Feel Fine.”

These days the sculptor isn’t feeling too bad, either. Don’t expect Ostenberg to affect the stereotypical pose of the tortured artist, struggling and misunderstood. He is unabashedly happy with the way things have worked out. It is not the money, he stresses. After deducting the galleries’ cut and the costs of casting and shipping, Ostenberg nets less than half of his pieces’ big price tags. He earned more as a banker. But he can’t complain: Of all the students he met in his six years in leading art schools, he is the only one he knows who is making a full-time living from sculpture. It is that hard.

Indeed, in hindsight he realizes that the odds of survival were so low that his decision to switch careers was just plain irrational. “It was really stupid,” he says. “I mean that literally. It was foolish.” In a different mood, he describes his choice in more philosophical terms: “I think my life has evolved.”

That life began in Nebraska, but he grew up mainly in Colorado, on a ranch surrounded by the cattle and horses whose spirits would later animate much of his artwork. He studied languages at Principia College in Illinois before enrolling at Stanford. One of his GSB friends was Scott Schnuck, who now runs his family’s grocery business in St. Louis, Missouri. “We had the common goal of getting through school,” Schnuck recalls. “Did I see his artistic side? No.”

But then, neither did Ostenberg. MBA in hand, he joined Citibank and worked in Brazil and Spain developing financial products for corporate clients. In 1986, he struck out on his own as an international financial consultant. The newfound independence gave him the time to take stock and connect with his “truest desires.”

“The aggressive pursuit of money and material well-being has been the socially accepted standard defining success,” he would later write. “But with an accompanying sense of purposelessness, an increasing number of people are searching for a more spiritual definition of achievement and a deeper meaning to life.” Although he had never before done any serious art himself, he was a museum buff and loved the visual stimulation of fine art. The turning point came one summer when he saw a retrospective of Velázquez and Goya in Madrid and also visited the Rodin Museum in Paris. “It was so magical,” he recalls. “I decided, let’s give it a shot.”

On visits to his sister in Kansas City, Missouri, Ostenberg had learned of its highly regarded art school. He dropped in and met its director. “He asked to see my portfolio. I asked, ‘What’s a portfolio?’ But they were very interested in mature students, and he could see I was very interested.” The director told him to read two introductory how-to books, including the bestselling volume by Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence.

Ostenberg returned to Spain and started drawing. After a couple of months, he overhauled his portfolio: Out went assets such as apartment and sports car; in came a sheaf of drawings of no market value, but impressive enough to gain admission to Kansas City Art Institute’s four-year bachelor of fine arts program. (The move touched his sister, too. She was so inspired by his decision to follow his heart that she gave up a successful legal career to pursue movie production. Starting out as an assistant to Paul Newman, she is now a special effects producer.)

OSTENBERG'S SCULPTURE "ABOVE CONFLICT"

In art school, Ostenberg discovered sculpture. “I went to art school to paint, but because I already had a BA, I was exempted from the liberal arts courses and was allowed to double-major in sculpture. I’m a decent painter, but I loved working three-dimensionally,” he says.

One year in Missouri, he could not afford the tuition and had to take a term off to work in a foundry, where he learned every stage in the laborious craft of “lost wax” bronze casting. The process starts with an original sculpture in clay, plaster, or other sculptable material, and ends with an identical copy in enduring bronze.

“It’s basically the same process that was used to cast bronze thousands of years ago,” Ostenberg notes. In its contemporary version, the artist’s original handiwork is first coated with a layer of fast-drying silicone-rubber paint, which is then reinforced with plaster to keep the pliable rubber mold rigid. The mold is cut open and the original sculpture removed and put away. Next, the inside of the rubber mold is coated with liquid wax, which solidifies into a hollow reproduction of the original work. Then, this wax copy is completely encased, inside and out, with a rock-hard ceramic shell. When the assemblage is placed in a kiln heated to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the wax melts away—hence the name “lost wax”—leaving a hollow ceramic mold into which molten bronze is poured.

After the piece cools down, the shell is hacked away to reveal the bronze sculpture. The last major step is patination. Time and nature tarnish bronze, but artists accelerate and control the process.

Hooked on sculpture, Ostenberg moved on to London’s renowned Royal College of Art (RCA), aided in part by a scholarship from the Henry Moore Foundation. “I wanted to build a serious body of work in that cocoon. I worked seven days a week. I’d be there before they opened the doors at 8, and they would have to kick me out at 10 P.M. Others didn’t have the same work ethic. I think Stanford teaches you to work your butt off.”

At RCA’s two-week degree show, he sold out most of his exhibition and made enough to buy the small flat in London that would be his base for the next few years. He now works on both sides of the Atlantic, dividing his year between London, the south of France, and New Mexico. In Santa Fe, he stays in an old Airstream trailer in a friend’s garden. With most of his customers in the United States, he is thinking of moving permanently to New Mexico.

Ostenberg’s work is now in several galleries, including Theo Waddington in London and Lisa Kurts in Memphis. British singer Kate Bush owns an Ostenberg. So does Scott Schnuck, who met his classmate in his new incarnation at their 25th anniversary reunion in 2000. “It’s contemporary, but not far out,” says Schnuck of the large piece he bought for the hall of his house in Colorado.

Ask others what they think of his work, and you’ll hear words like “whimsical,” “playful,” “dreamlike.” “It has a spirit of lightness,” says Network Appliance executive Thom Bryant, of the piece displayed at the company’s headquarters. “Most people can relate to it, unlike a lot of public art that’s just ignored.” Writes London critic Edward Lucie-Smith: “The first thing that strikes one about Thomas Ostenberg’s sculptures is that they are so joyful. Joy is not an emotion I normally associate with contemporary art, however worthy its other qualities.” What’s his secret? Ostenberg shares it readily. “The creative process is such a joyous thing—unless you take yourself too seriously and you listen to the critics instead of to the pieces.”

Most of his sculptures play with the theme of motion and balance. Look down and you’ll perceive a precariousness in the form that almost makes you want to reach out with a steadying hand. But look up and you’ll see a human figure that is supremely confident, performing extravagant acrobatics with perfect poise.

“It’s very autobiographical,” the artist says. He has learned from personal experience that a simple shift in mindset can produce radical, uplifting change. His sculptures capture that dynamic moment of risk and excitement. “I used to be very secure economically. It was a golden life. But I felt a little bit barren. The difference now is I don’t know how I’m going to pay my studio rent from month to month, but in terms of personal fulfillment, I’ve got it nailed. So the lower half of my pieces often look unstable, but the guy on top of the base—bam!—he’s totally secure.”

Ostenberg hasn’t forgotten his roots, though. Some who have followed his career say his business background gives him a distinct competitive edge in the art world. “Most artists at his level aren’t well versed in the business aspects of being a working artist,” notes John Wright Schaefer, owner of the Peyton Wright Gallery. “Tom brings to bear mature life experiences that are obvious both in his art and in the way he conducts himself in the art business.” Frank Morbillo, Shidoni’s foundry manager, has also observed the skill with which Ostenberg has managed his affairs: “He’s very positive and proactive in his pursuit of galleries and marketing his work.”

Ostenberg says he worked on marketing himself while still in school. After his first year at the RCA, he had high-quality, professional photographs taken of his work and printed them on postcards. “Every three months I would send my postcards to 700 different galleries,” he says. He believes this direct marketing campaign gave him a visibility among critics and collectors that belied his status as a relative newcomer. Now he has a Web site (www.thomasostenberg.com) to showcase his work.

“Most artists invest so much emotional capital in the creation of an art piece, but then find it difficult to stand back and say, now I’ve got a product I need to sell,” he says. “I still think of myself as a business person. My attitude is, I must move this widget, otherwise I won’t be able to do my next one.

“Once you’ve been in business school, it’s natural to think in those terms rather than leave the financial side of things to chance. But by choice I make sure it does not take up more than 15 to 20 percent of my time. What I really love is to be in the studio.”

Observe him at Shidoni, doing what he loves, and it is hard to picture Ostenberg in a suit giving PowerPoint presentations in a boardroom. He is at home here in waterproof pants and sneakers, surrounded by the wax, the silicone, the chemicals, and the tools that help transmute his imagination into solid works of art.

The bronze casting process, he notes, can reproduce an original work with such fidelity that you sometimes can discern the artist’s fingerprints preserved on the metal. On the lawn are three of his finished pieces, loaned to Shidoni for its 30th anniversary open house the previous weekend. He scans the surface of one of them looking hopefully for his fingerprints, but gets distracted by an inch-long, dirty white streak—the kind that quickly adorns outdoor sculptures everywhere.

“Bird print!” he laughs. He licks his thumb and tries to rub off the mark, as unselfconsciously as a parent might wipe away a food stain from a child’s cheek. He only manages to smudge it. But what does become quite clear is that, despite his cavalier description of art as business, his creations are not mere widgets to him.

Inside the foundry, he cheerfully greets the artisans who are bent over their work. In the wax room, half a dozen young men are working, with funk-metal band Clutch playing on a stereo. They look up shyly as he introduces his fiancée to them with barely concealed pride. She works as a Web designer, and just as Ostenberg used to in his past life, she drives a sporty German convertible, which he borrows occasionally. Except that hers is not a Porsche, but a little Volkswagen Golf with cow-print upholstery.

Now married, the couple met on the ski slopes of Vail. He, who grew up in Colorado, was then living in England. She is English but lives in Colorado. It is just another happy twist in the life of Tom Ostenberg. “One thing after another has fallen into place. I wake up every day and say, thank you,” he says. “A lot of it is listening to intuition. After a while, you have to stop paying attention to facts and start listening to feelings. It’s just worked for me.

“I wouldn’t change a thing.”