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His last public showing in Santa Barbara County was at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art more than 20 years ago.
These days the only place you can see his work in town is in his home studio, where private showings are available
by appointment, as he sells the works almost exclusively by referral. The one and only catalog-memoir about the
Ribbons In Space was published back in 1977. His website has video, photos and a complete résumé. His largest
sculpture to date was commissioned for the Beverly Hills City Hall, 26 feet high. And even the artist himself can’t
tell you how many of the shimmering sculptures he’s created over 40 years.
“It’s somewhere around a few hundred,” he estimates. “But I’ve never really kept track.”
A native of New York City, Herschler’s interest in sculpture began as a youngster, but he elected to study
architecture at Cornell. He worked in the field for about three years after graduating from Cornell in the
early 1960s, first as an associate at an architecture firm in New York City, and then on his own. He was
commissioned to design a summer home for a wealthy couple in Southampton as well as a private
chalet in Switzerland.
But sculpture continued to beckon, and Herschler eventually returned to school, earning his
MFA at Claremont in California. That was where the idea for the “Ribbons in Space” took
shape in 1967.
“I had been carving marble in Italy, and
then working with wood back here in
the United States,” Herschler recalls.
“Then in graduate school I invented
and began developing the Ribbons
in Space.”
Stainless steel became the primary
material not long after that, in 1967,
when Herschler began experimenting with
different forms and shapes. But by his own
words, those early designs were a “primitive”
version of the graceful sculptures he
creates today.
“Think of writers,” he says by way
of comparison to his 40 years shaping
steel. “They spend a lifetime refining their
storytelling and skills, and hopefully finish
with a masterpiece.”
Herschler cites several sculptors among his
influences in those early days, among them
David Smith, the American who worked frequently with stainless steel and rectangular
standing forms, and Constantin Brancusi, the 20th-century Romanian sculptor who helped launch the
modernist movement via stationary pieces that Herschler notes nevertheless “evoked the feeling of movement.”
Alexander Calder – inventor of the mobile, whose famous creations were also suspended in space – is an obvious
antecedent. “(His work) was kinetic and playful and very imaginative,” Herschler says.
Prices for Ribbons in Space range from $2,500
for the smallest stationary horizontal works up
to $35,000 for the largest indoor pieces, and up
from there for the giant outside structures.