Totemic and fragmented in form, De Staebler's figurative sculptures call forth the many contingencies of the human condition, such as resiliency and fragility, growth and decay, earthly boundedness and the possibility for spiritual transcendence.

The lodging, which he shared with his mother and siblings, Herbert Conrad "Hobey" Jr. (1929–2008) and Juliette Jeanne "Jan" (1931–2006), was a rustic cabin built next to the bluffs of the White River.

In 1952, De Staebler traveled to Europe aboard the Greek freighter “The Atlantic Beacon.” Once in Europe, he visited cities across Italy (Genoa, Pisa, Sienna, Rome, Assisi, Padua, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, Milan), Switzerland (Berne and Basel), France (Paris, Chartres) and England (London) where he was exposed to canonical works of art and architecture, including Chartres Cathedral and iconic sculptures such as the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican Museums in Rome, Michelangelo's unfinished Captives at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, the Rondanini Pietà at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre in Paris, and the Three Goddesses from the Parthenon at the British Museum in London.

In his obituary for the artist, art critic Kenneth Baker writes: “[De Staebler’s] academic study of religion at Princeton University gave him a philosophical grounding in the existentialist perspective on life to which he was temperamentally inclined.

He ultimately declined the award and instead volunteered for United States Army, where he was trained in Teletype at stations in Hof an der Saale and West Berlin, Germany.

[4] Soon after returning to the States, De Staebler moved to the San Francisco Bay Area with his first wife, Dona Merced Curley, earning a teaching credential in secondary education followed by a master’s degree in fine art from University of California, Berkeley in 1961.

While at Berkeley, De Staebler studied under Peter Voulkos, a renowned abstract sculptor who flouted ceramic’s categorization as mere craft, elevating it to the realm of the fine arts.

The equally organic and preternatural qualities of his forms evoke the tenuous relationships between earthly monumentality and spiritual transcendence, fragmentation and wholeness, and fragility and strength.

Donald Kuspit observes how De Stabeler's art can be seen as: “an attempt to strip the human figure down to its most elemental, ‘almost simplistic,’ terms, revealing it in all its archaic bodiliness.

His interest in such a classical art historical medium might strike as counterintuitive, however De Staebler adapted the casting process to reflect his more deconstructed, liberated approach to art-making.

While wing-like shapes were not novel to De Staebler's art, this new material precipitated a greater, more involved investigation of wings and their various symbolic manifestations within the realms of mythology, religion, the animal kingdom and nature.

During his tenure he worked with such notable colleagues as Peter Vandenberg, John Gutmann, Robert Bechtle, Richard McClean, Leonard Hunter, and Neal White.