My artistic process begins as a dialogue with materials. I am collecting and salvaging the discarded detritus of urban life, such as weathered, wrinkled and torn fragments carelessly thrown away on sidewalks; or flattened, rusted metal odds and ends embedded in the pavement. These objects all have their own histories, which become fused together through the process of assembling them into works of art.  The vast collection of flotsam and fragments I have gathered over the years includes disused cultural artifacts, archival and library rejects, old letters and books, and random papers and ephemera.  In recent years, my work has also incorporated natural elements such as leaves, branches, sand and stones.  Fragments are a symptom of our torn and broken world, which seems to get more catastrophically torn apart every day. Though it is only one step toward mending the brokenness of our lives, perhaps the act of joining various disjointed elements of our splintered experience ...

  Renata Stein grew up in an East European family of Displaced Persons in Germany and arrived in New York from Berlin as a visiting scholar in 1983. She is a mixed media artist, sculptor, curator, and translator whose work has been shown at a variety of venues. Selected Solo Shows Residency Exhibit Institut für alles Mögliche, Berlin, Germany, 2011 Transformations Synagogue for the Arts, New York, NY, 2005 Home/land: Artists, Immigrations and Identity  Residency; taught classes; group show; solo show Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA, 2003   Assemblages and Constructions: Artwork by Renata Stein Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, 2002 Selected Group Shows  Out of the Shadows Carter Burden Gallery, New York, NY, 2026   Rooted: The Ecological Duality of Nature and Jewish Identity Manny Cantor Center, New York, NY, 2015   Art of Detritus: Recycling with Imagination Viridian Artists, New York, NY, 2015 Fin...

 

 

These pieces came about while I was at work, putting together sets for a feature film. I collected appealing bits of wood left over near the chop saw. I glued pieces together into logical clumps, then mounted them in dramatic positions that mimicked tiny Brutalist monuments. I originally imagined them as maquettes for public sculptures to be fabricated in steel or concrete, as center pieces for a city square or park. Then they became little experiments in shape and pattern. Then they became projects, and then toys. I have found them equally interesting and fun. - Ted Altman, November 2025 Pictured - Ted Altman: Eight Step Ladder Version 2 Paper sculpture 6" x 4" x 3" 2025