Brochure Announcing the Trump Installation

My 49-year art career has been a continuous quest of the nature of woman. It has led me from the contemporary woman as mother, wife, nurturer, to vamp, seductress, and queen. Now the journey harkens to the pre-biblical period, to ancient civilizations of women-centered societies. My focus is the Near East with Minoan, Cretin, and Cycladic imagery. Their ascendancy was from 12,000 to 500 BCE.

The goddess represents the all- encompassing power of woman, the manifestation of humanity as a part of a whole, part of the cosmos and part of nature; an image that men and women can embrace equally.

Among all goddesses, Asherah is my inspiration, for it is she who was carved from living trees as well as the image of the tree of life. This goddess is the embodiment of my passion for wood and all that is woman.

I want to resurrect the Goddess Asherah and the goddess within all of us through my art. The goddess is a symbol of empowerment for women that men will not resent or fear for it is a metaphor for earth as a living organism, an archetype for a balanced feminine consciousness that encompasses men and women as equals. Maybe this is a search for the strength of women in all of us.

Like early American carvers of figure-heads and icons, Hostetler draws his inspiration from mythological, folkloric and popular cultural sources. He has become a wholly original creator of Female Figures carved directly from American hardwoods and exotic woods such as zirocote, zebrawood and purpleheart.

Hostetler's bronzes are cast from the wood carvings, thereby developing the imagery with painterly patinas, brilliant coloring and polished surfaces. The repertoire includes cast epoxy and the marriage of wood and bronze.

The first complete biography, Hostetler the Carver, recently published by Ohio University, richly depicts and chronicals this artist's consistent vision since 1948.

The Duo was chosen by eminent architect Philip Johnson to be placed at Trump International Hotel and Tower, One Central Park West, New York City. It was a wish of the late Dan Galbreath, partner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower,to incorporate a Hostetler in this project. Together, Donald Trump, Dale Frey of GE Pension, and Lizanne Galbreath CEO of Galbreath Co. fulfilled Dan's wish.

Trump International Hotel and Tower is a key structure in the fabric of New York City. Formerly the Gulf and Western Building at Columbus Circle, it represents an extremely prestigious and prominent placement for Hostetler.

David L. Hostetler is a celebrated wood sculptor and professor emeritus of Ohio University. His art career spans 45 years, progressing in style from folk images to stylized symbols to spiritual icons all expressed as female forms. If ever an art was inspired and conceived in direct response to natural forces, it is the sculpture of David L. Hostetler. Like Henry Moore, Hostetler is one with his medium. In a sense, he recreates the material itself, continually redefining the natural in the process of defining the artistic.'

LOUIS ZONA Director of the Butler Institute of American Art