Bust created by Robert Shure
Robert Shure was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948. His mother recalled that he never gave her any trouble in his childhood because she could sit him down at the kitchen table, give him paper and a pencil, and be sure that he would be absorbed in drawing for hours on end. In third grade Shure employed his artistic talents at school and won a statewide poster competition. Unlike Adio di Biccari’s grade school teachers, who rewarded art with beatings, Shure’s teachers were so impressed with his work that they gave him his own “studio” (a closet) to work in. Shure continued to hone his skills in high school and at the New York Institute of Technology, where he enrolled in 1970 as a Bachelor of Fine Arts major. The Institute had recently created its art department and boasted an impressive faculty with many prominent contemporary sculptors and painters active in the New York City art scene. Shure became close with one such artist, Julius Tobias, a sculptor from whom he learned a great deal about aesthetics and fabrication in general. Shure graduated, cum laude, in 1970, earning the coveted “Gold Medal in Sculpture Award,” the highest honor in sculpture given by the college. He decided that attending a dedicated art school for graduate work would be a logical next step in his education. He applied to several schools and received a full scholarship from Tufts University, which had a joint program with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Though he had never before been in Boston and didn’t know a single person in the city, Shure nevertheless packed up his belongings and headed northeast with his wife, Kathleen, to pursue his artistic education and future. His old instructor Tobias introduced Shure to the Parker 470 Gallery in Boston where Shure obtained studio space in exchange for performing various and sundry tasks. Though the gallery was in such a dangerous neighborhood that Shure took to camouflaging the door to his little studio with refuse to prevent robberies, it would soon become apparent that the benefits of the location far outweighed this inconvenience. One night in 1971, as Shure and his wife were cleaning the gallery, he happened to point out the building across the street to her, a classic Italian-style building that seemed to be an artist’s studio. With encouragement from Kathleen he decided to go over and introduce himself, and in this manner the Shures came to know Adio di Biccari and Arcangelo Cascieri.
When Shure walked into the studio, with its Italian Renaissance furnishings and wealth of statues in various states of completion, he knew “within five seconds” that he wanted to dedicate his life to making figurative sculpture just as di Biccari and Cascieri had. Learning of Shure’s sculptural zeal, the elder artists took him on as an assistant, an arrangement that would prove to be a great opportunity for all involved. By the late 1960s the upswing in church construction had subsided, leaving Cascieri di Biccari, Inc. without one of its main sources of commissions. As a response to the decline in work the Schwamb Mill studio was closed and Cascieri began to work at 27 Tavern Road with di Biccari. Little new business came in because no attempts were made to advertise, and slowly the Tavern Road studio transformed from a bustling enterprise employing six to twelve artisans to a quiet, languishing operation in which Cascieri and di Biccari worked alone and barely spoke to one another. Shure’s vigor and passion revitalized their enthusiasm for the partnership as they turned their attention to passing on their sculptural knowledge to him and continuing the work of the studio. For Shure, the arrangement entailed receiving an invaluable education from the most qualified teachers imaginable, as well as essentially gaining a new family: Cascieri and di Biccari, with their characteristic warmth and hospitality, essentially adopted him and Kathleen. The Shures traveled into work with the artists in the morning, ate dinner with them at night, and made fast friends with their large extended families.
Business slowly picked up after Shure joined the studio as the pendulum of public interest swung away from architectural minimalism, requiring sculptures and ornaments to be restored and replaced where they had been removed from buildings. The renewed importance of public monuments honoring veterans, municipal workers, historical figures and events also kept Shure busy and eventually became the focus of his work. Though Shure’s official position as an assistant remained constant over the next 14 years, he slowly took on more and more responsibilities from his aging mentors. By the late 1980s Cascieri’s health was fading fast and he turned over all his work to Shure. Di Biccari remained physically healthy, but his avidity for his craft waned as it became vogue for amateurs experimenting with clay to call themselves sculptors. For him sculpture was like a religion, and he believed that only those with years of training on the intricacies and nuances of the craft could call themselves sculptors. For this reason, along with pressure from Northeastern University and real financial necessity, Cascieri and di Biccari sold the Tavern Road studio to Northeastern University in 1990. Though the artists sold the building thinking it would be turned into a dormitory, it was demolished before the ink had dried on the bill of sale. Today, with a parking lot in its place and Tavern Road itself destroyed to create a new area of Northeastern’s campus, the only reminders of the studio’s existence are the memories held by those who worked and learned there.
Skylight Studios: Inception and Present Day
With the Tavern Road studio sold, Adio di Biccari and Arcangelo Cascieri officially retired, leaving the business to Robert Shure. They had dissolved the corporation in 1983, working afterwards under the names Cascieri di Biccari Shure and Studio 27. In need of a new workspace to replace the Tavern Road studio, in 1990 Shure moved his studio to its current location at 105 Salem Street in Woburn, an ideal building due to its ample space and easily adaptable floor plan. While they were renovating the building to optimize it for studio use the Shures decided to raise a portion of the roof to add height and skylights for natural light. With the building ready, the new studio lacked only a name; after much deliberation the Shures chose Kathleen’s suggestion, Skylight Studios, Inc.
Since its opening Skylight Studios has thrived, becoming one of the most active and diverse sculpture studios in the United States. Dotting the landscape throughout Boston, New England, and the country are countless monuments, sculptures, and restorations completed by Shure and his team. Twelve artisans currently assist Shure in the day-to-day work of the studio. The relief portrait of Ted Williams at the entrance of the tunnel that bears his name, the Korean War monument at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Charlestown, MA, and the Cy Young monument at the site of the first World Series are just a few of the noteworthy public commissions completed by the studio in the Boston area. The work of Robert Shure and Skylight Studios can be seen at the Smithsonian, Mount Vernon, the Massachusetts State House, the Bennington Battle Ground, and Yankee Stadium. Also significant is the heroic size sculptural relief of George Washington in the Washington Monument, which earned Shure the Federal Design Achievement Award in 1995. Additionally, Skylight Studios has performed a significant amount of conservation work, helping to preserve and restore Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Adams Memorial and Shaw Memorial (which the studio also reproduced), the Yale University plaster cast collection, and the plaster sculptures of Katharine Lane Weems at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Though the Internet has found its way into the business side of studio work and new materials and techniques have been integrated into the mold making process, in many aspects the studio at 105 Salem Street has changed little since its inception more than 150 years ago: inside the building the smell of clay and plaster is strong, the sound of craftsmen’s tools rings through the air, and casts and original sculptures crowd every inch of free space. If you watch Shure and his assistants work, you will see living embodiments of a sculptural tradition spanning many generations, men and women who are in the process of creating a new chapter in the history of Skylight Studios.
Reference:
Dissertation by Nathaniel Shirley in conjunction with Robert Shure
Skylight Studios Inc.
105 Salem St
Woburn, MA 01801
(p)781-933-3822
(f)781-937-3757
services@skylightstudiosinc.com