Nohl Fellow Roy Staab created Whirling Tennure for The Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists 2024 exhibition that was on view at the Haggerty Museum of Art through August 2. The installation will remain in place through October 25, 2025.

Roy Staab was born in Milwaukee and earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He spent most of the 1970s in Europe, where he conducted his own studies in drawing and painting. By 1980, he was living in New York, where he began creating outdoor installations using scavenged materials in his Brooklyn neighborhood. While aligned with early Land Art of the 1970s and 1980s in its use of natural materials found onsite, Staab's work is meant to be ephemeral, leaving no permanent mark on the land. Staab’s sculptures transform as sunlight casts shadows onto the ground, adding complexity to the existing compositions of lines and forms. Many of Staab's installations, such as Whirling Tennure, utilize a carefully composed set of vertical posts that form the foundation for material to be ‘drawn-in-space,’ floating above the ground. From a distance, these works form unified geometric patterns, while up close, they fragment into lines and spaces that frame and reconfigure the surrounding landscape. Staab has traveled the world installing his works in Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Although some are documented through photographs and videos, many exist only in memory.

Support for the Nohl exhibition is generously provided by the Mary Martha Doerr Endowment Fund and in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.  

The Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists are funded by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund and Joy Engine, and administered by the Lynden Sculpture Garden.

Whirling Tennure is presented in partnership with Sculpture Milwaukee.