Laumeier Sculpture Park Announces Artist Lecture and Sculpture Installation by Sculptor Chakaia Booker

Sculptor Chakaia Booker will give a talk on her work on Thursday, April 4 at 10 a.m. at St. Louis Community College, Meramec Campus. The talk will be held in the Humanities East Building, Sculpture Studio, Room HE131. The Meramec campus is located at 11333 Big Bend Blvd. Following the lecture, Booker will return to Laumeier Sculpture Park at 1 p.m. to begin the installation of one of her works on the grounds. Serendipity, 1998 will be installed along a nature trail near Beverly Pepper's Cromlech Glen. The installation is expected to take three days to complete, and the public is invited to visit Laumeier and watch the installation as it progresses.

St. Louis, MO (PRWEB) March 23, 2002 -Internationally recognized sculptor Chakaia Booker will give a lecture at St. Louis Community College, Meramec Campus, on Thursday, April 4 at 10 a.m., courtesy of Laumeier Sculpture Park. Booker will talk about her work. The lecture will be held in the Sculpture Studio in the Humanities East building, room HE131. The public is invited and encouraged to attend both the lecture and Bookers installation of Serendipity, 1998 on the grounds at Laumeier Sculpture Park.

Following the lecture, Booker will return to Laumeier Sculpture Park at 1 p.m. to begin the installation of Serendipity, 1998, with the help of art students from the Meramec campus. The work will be installed on one of the nature trails, near Beverly Peppers Cromlech Glen, and will remain at Laumeier for two years. The installation is expected to take three days to complete. The public is invited to visit Laumeier and watch the installation as it progresses.

Chakaia Booker creates sculptures out of abandoned tires. In her complex constructions, all kinds of tires are worked into organic shapes that reveal unexpected colors, forms and textures. These works possess a remarkable quality in striking contrast to their industrial origins. Booker sees a connection between the way the tread of the tires has been worn away by the road and the way lifes experiences wear on the individual.

Chakaia Bookers use of man-made materials to create organic shapes and landscapes, and the scale in which she works, fits with the Laumeier experience of art and nature," said Glen P. Gentele, Director of Laumeier Sculpture Park. We are excited to be able to provide the public with the opportunity to hear Chakaia speak and see her at work. The inclusion of student artists from Meramec is a particularly exciting collaboration for the Park."

Bookers primary reason for choosing rubber was its availability and associations between tire treads and the patterns of African art, textiles and body scarification. The versatility of the tires is symbolic of the versatility that has enabled Africans to survive despite displacement from their homeland. In addition, she likens the varying pigment of the tires-blue-black, deep gray and brown, sometimes stamped with red or blue-to the range of African American skin tones.

Booker demonstrates sensitivity for the subtleties of differences of color and texture in the discarded tires. The rubber tires are cut, shredded, twisted and bent into shape through a labor-intensive process. Booker finds the tires in dumps and along the roadside. All kinds of tires-from bicycle inner tubes to steel belted radials-are worked into organic shapes that are suggestive of lush landscapes or undersea worlds.

Bookers work combines modernist and ancient sculptural practices. The artist engages the strategies of assemblage art and the appropriation of found objects, and presents them in the form of work done in high relief, a tradition that dates back to antiquity, practiced among the Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations. Adding to the complexity of her reliefs, she infuses painterly concerns borrowed from the landscape genre. Although they are objects credited with contributing to the defacement of the environment or landscape, the rubber tires are used by the artist as an element to render abstract shapes and suggestions from the natural landscape. This application both questions and celebrates aesthetic notions of landscape and nature.

Chakaia Booker was born in Newark, New Jersey and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist herself is as unforgettable a sight as her artwork. She wears brilliant shawls and robes of purples, reds, greens and golds, and patterned robes with African motifs shes designed herself. But it is her large headpieces, never the same, that are most noted.

The artist earned her undergraduate degree in sociology from Rutgers in 1976, and her M.F.A. from City College of New York in 1993. In the last five years, her work has received much attention, here and abroad (in the Netherlands, Japan and Korea). She had one-person shows at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York; the Akron Museum of Art in Ohio; and the Max Protetch and June Kelly galleries in New York, among others. She was also included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

Laumeier Sculpture Park expands the context of contemporary sculpture beyond the traditional confines of a museum. It is our mission to initiate a lifelong process of cultural awareness, enrich lives, and encourage creative thinking by actively engaging people in experiences of sculpture and nature simultaneously.

The fine exhibitions and family programming presented at Laumeier would not have been possible without the financial support of the Arts and Education Council of Greater St. Louis, the Missouri Arts Council, the Regional Arts Commission, the St. Louis County Parks Department, and our generous Friends of Laumeier Sculpture Park.

Laumeier Sculpture Park is located at 12580 Rott Road in Sunset Hills, near Interstate 44 and Lindbergh Boulevard. The park is open daily from 8 a.m. until 1/2 hour past sunset. The gallery and shop are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon until 5 p.m. For more information, call (314) 821-1209 or visit us at www.laumeier.org