Cecil C. Carstenson

Cecil Carstenson was born in Marquette, Kansas, in 1906. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute and the Omaha Art School. In the late 1940s, when he and his wife, Blanche, arrived in Kansas City, he completed a program at Finlay Engineering College and took a position at Western Electric upon graduation.

He lived most of his life in the Roanoke neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, just around the corner from the home and studio of painter Thomas Hart Benton. He also served with the Air Force during World War II, coming out a lieutenant colonel with a Legion of Merit award. 

During their early years in Kansas City, the Carstensons both blossomed as artists and established well-known reputations within the Kansas City arts community, both in their work and with their contributions to local arts organizations. While Blanche had a penchant for designing and creating large textile works, Cecil pursued his artistic passions as a sculptor for more than fifty years -- forty of which he worked exclusively in wood, and which started with an interest in whittling.

Along with his wife, Cecil helped to establish the Mid-America Artists Association and served as one of its presidents while also working to help establish the Kansas City Artists Coalition. He was also a member of the Artists Equity Association and Missouri's Council on Visual Arts.

In between exhibiting his own works, Cecil and Blanche also gave lectures on art while he formally taught sculpture at the University of Kansas City from 1951-1953. Over his career, he had many one-man exhibits across the Midwest and wrote Film, Sculpture in 1962 and Craft and Creation of Wood Sculpture in 1971. 

Works by Carstenson can be viewed at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas; the Birger Sandzén Memorial Art Gallery in Lindsborg, Kansas; the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska; and within the Missouri Valley Special Collections at the Kansas City Public Library.

Cecil retired from Western Electric as shop superintendent in 1962 and continued with his sculpting and lecturing after his retirement. He died at the age of eighty-four in 1991.