Starr Kempf
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Starr Gideon Kempf (August 13, 1917, Ohio – 1995, Colorado Springs, Colorado) was a sculptor, architect, and artist best known for his graceful steel wind sculptures.
His life
Starr Kempf was raised on a small farm in Ohio, near a Swiss Mennonite community. His family, including his father and seven uncles, were blacksmiths and carpenters, from whom he learned craftsmanship and engineering at an early age.
He was offered a scholarship to attend the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he received high marks for his paintings and drawings. After graduating, he served in the United States Air Force during World War II. He married recent German immigrant Hedwig Roelen in 1942, who was a nurse at Glockner Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs. In 1948, they purchased the property of their future home in Cheyenne Canyon, where Starr designed and built a house and art studio. They had three children: Madelin, Michael, and Charlotte.
Starr began to work in bronze sculpture in 1955, which he sold to collectors around the United States. As of 1977, his vision had blossomed into the creation of elaborate steel wind sculptures, each of which took him up to three years to construct. His kinetic wind sculptures were designed to exhibit graceful movement and interaction with the wind, and took the form of birds and wind vanes, often soaring to more than fifty feet in height.
Starr Kempf committed suicide in 1995.
Zoning controversy
Kempf's work is well-known in the Colorado Springs area, particularly due to controversy regarding its display on the Kempf family property where Kempf's daughter Lottie currently lives. For many years, the home in Cheyenne Canyon had ten of his wind sculptures on display, and was used for conducting business with interested buyers; the home also tended to draw tourists. Neighbors, protesting the use of a residental area as a place of business, brought the matter to the City's attention.
In December 2001, Starr Enterprises, the trust managing Kempf's estate, negotiated a deal with the Colorado Springs City Council that would allow the sculpture garden to remain on the site, provided no more commercial tours of the property were given. Lottie Kempf violated the agreement, citing a grandfather clause and land patent rights, and continued to give tours; she was subsequently removed as a trustee of Starr Enterprises. In 2002, Judge David Gilbert ordered that six of the sculptures closest to the property line be removed. As of June 2003, three of them have been relocated; the fate of the remaining sculptures has yet to be determined.
Starr Enterprises currently manages Kempf's legacy, under direction from Starr's grandson Joshua Kempf.
External links
- Starr Kempf official website (http://www.starrkempf.com/)
- Colorado Springs Independent article on Kempf zoning controversy (http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2003-06-05/artnews.html)