Solo Exhibition Series

Don’t Tread on Me: Sculpture by Chakaia Booker

June 1, 2014 – October 31, 2017

Chakaia Booker's exhibition has been extended at Governors State University's Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park through October 2017 to coincide with her works' recent installation at

Millennium Park with Millennium Park and The 606.

Essay by Victor Cassidy

Throughout her career, Chakaia Booker has explored the expressive possibilities of unusual materials. She is best known for her work with discarded automobile tires, which she cuts into pieces of varying length, width, and shape—and fastens onto wooden or metal armatures. She builds indoor and outdoor sculptures ranging in scale from intimate wall pieces to large public works.

Booker culls rich effects from her material. She slices and folds tires into small teardrop and tray shapes, diamonds, daggers, and more, then attaches dozens of identical pieces onto the armature to make rhythmic patterns and textures. To activate the surface, she mounts some tire fragments with the tread facing outward. She may bend fragments backward to show the tire's smooth, somewhat shiny interior. 
The artist uses automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycle tires, whatever is available. Manufacturers change their products every year, she says, which means that she constantly gets new treads and textures to work with. The colors vary too, particularly on the inside, from different shades of black to subdued yellows, purples, greens, and blues.

Booker's work recalls textile, which was her first material. As a child, she learned sewing from her aunt, grandmother, and sister. When she grew older, she altered her own clothes to accommodate her height and long arms. Later she began to make wearable art pieces and sculptures, adding discarded bones and wood scraps into them.

 In the 1980s, she decided to make public sculptures and sought a material that would be durable outdoors. Tires were cheap and easy to find. Friends helped her load them onto trucks and carry them to her studio. She sees her use of tires as a personal statement on humanity's relationship to the environment and our responsibility for contaminating it.

Don't Tread on Me: Sculpture by Chakaia Booker consists of three outdoor pieces--Serendipity (1998); Meeting Ends (2005); and What's Not (2009). These works come from different times in her career and suggest her creative range.

Serendipity, the earliest piece, is an enclosure-like construction, twelve feet high, made of long wooden blocks that the artist has covered with stretched lengths of tire rubber and held together with long steel bolts. Booker has called Serendipity "a composition" instead of a construction because its transparent walls bell out at the viewer and its structural supports lean to one side. Serendipity draws on the forms of architecture, but has no practical use except as art.

Behind the main portion of Serendipity sits a much smaller structure whose meaning becomes clear when the piece is viewed from above. Looking down into the quadrangle, the artwork is like a question mark and the artist stated in the catalog for her 2004 show Jersey Ride that the word serendipity "is about finding something accidentally and then having it turn into something valuable." 
Meeting Ends, the most African of the three pieces in Don't Tread on Me, is a pedestal sculpture that suggests a traditional ceremonial staff. Roughly nine feet high including its concrete base, it's an expressive tour de force.

At the bottom of Meeting Ends are short folded tire strips, tread facing outward, that make clustered teardrop shapes with an active surface. Above this, Booker has fastened lozenge-shaped strips of tire—they look like feathers--to the steel armature. Coming from somewhere within this rhythmic mass are long pieces of tire interior that fold in and out, displaying their corduroy-like surface as they catch the light.
Booker attaches arc-shaped pieces of tire body above this, which seem to almost move and recall dreadlocks. Topping off the sculpture are short lozenge-shaped strips attached to the armature so they point in all directions, a bit like the exuberant black hair styles called twists. Meeting Ends is installed outside the gallery where Governor's State University displays its Pacific Island art collection, to make a connection between art forms of the past and the present.

Visible across the lake is What's Not (2009) a frame-shaped piece on steel legs that connects chronologically with Booker's 2008-09 exhibition of ten outdoor sculptures in Indianapolis, Indiana.
With the Indianapolis exhibition, Booker's work became more complex and less narrative. The frame assumed greater importance as the sculptures became more linear and the artist gave greater attention to surface. There are specific reasons for these changes.

Booker normally works with steel-belted tires that have wires embedded in them. As long as the tire is cut off straight, the wires are too and the sculpture can be touched. If wires protrude, they can hurt people. Since the exhibition was planned for downtown streets with much pedestrian traffic, the artist played it safe and used tires without steel belts.

"Those tires were a different material for me," she said in an interview, "which translated into new ways of thinking about the sculpture—and building it. Every time I make new work, I try to find a different voice in what I've been doing. I see how I can keep pushing my work forward.

"Sometimes my changes are very subtle," she continued. "Also, depending on the piece, I must balance the form and the surface so the work speaks clearly. It's not like I can ignore my audience and just do things all of a sudden that only mean something to me."

Tires are a challenging material to work with. "If you're trying to put them into a particular position," says Booker, "you must hold on for dear life and get your elbows, knees, and body into it. The tire can snap back and knock you out." To survive, the artist does yoga, practices Tai Chi, and even lifts weights.

Chakaia Booker is an artist at the peak of her powers. Her work constantly refreshes itself as she works with materials that change in unpredictable ways whenever she comes to them. 

Checklist of the Exhibition
(Dimensions H x W x D in inches)

Serendipity     1998
rubber tires, wood, steel
144 x 720 x 24 (dimensions variable)
Loan courtesy of the artist

Meeting Ends     2005
rubber tires, stainless steel
80 x 50 x 47
Loan courtesy of the artist

What's Not     2009
rubber tires, stainless steel
110 x 64 x 34
Loan courtesy of the artist

Solo Exhibition Series:Horizons
June 30, 2009 – October 1, 2010

Horizons was brought to the U.S. by the Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY for exhibition in 2007. The work was exhibited in Memphis, TN and San Antonio, TX, before its arrival in University Park. After its presentation at the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park, it traveled to the following venues:

Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA
Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL

Conceived and executed in a spare, yet dramatic, Icelandic setting that combines an exhilarating combination of ocean, earth, and sky, the figures delivered a new, psychological tension from their placement in the prairie landscape that is northeastern Illinois.

Each standing figure possesses a single, horizontal glass insert in their upper torso. The artist has said, “Glass as a material has a lot of different connotations. It can be fragile, yet dangerous. It can be translucent, or solid . . . It’s like water, but also like air.” She continues, addressing the base material with which she has forged the works, ”The color of the iron signifies their primal quality – as if they are emerging from the earth.”

Peter Osborne, Director of the Berkeley Square Gallery in London, England has said, “Steinunn´s sculpture is elemental, extracted from raw material at its rawest; iron, glass, aluminum . . . There is solitude and pathos, but also strength and dignity. Great sculpture resonates with its environment, and Steinunn´s work is at its most powerful and provocative when it re-defines its natural surroundings.”

Checklist of the exhibition
Horizons     2007-08
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir
12 cast-iron figures, glass, dimensions variable
Loan courtesy of the artist

Steinunn Thorarinsdottir
Born: 1955, Reykjavik, Iceland

Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir lives and works in Reykjavik, Iceland. The artist has studied at the Portsmouth Academy of Art and Design in England and the Accademia di Belle Arte in Bologna, Italy. She has completed commissions for the Icelandic and British governments and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, U.K. She is represented by Osborne Samuel Gallery in the U.K. and Europe and Scott White Gallery in the U.S.

Solo Exhibition Series: Neil Goodman in the Park

June 28, 2010 – October 31, 2011

(The essay below was written for the exhibition and has been modified to reflect the fact that the presentation is past)

If you thought you were familiar with Neil Goodman’s large scale sculpture, then "Neil Goodman in the Park" proved to be a revelation. Goodman’s work is often associated with the gritty industrial surroundings that he views on his daily trip to work – the iron and steel factories and refineries of northwest Indiana. It has been seen in galleries with strong architectural settings where its presence is signaled by a quiet assertiveness.

The installation at the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park provided the viewer with an opportunity to re-assess the artist’s hand. Goodman placed the work in an open, grassy glade interspersed with trees and flanked by shrubs near the university’s east entrance. In this setting, contrasting with the riotous backdrop of the hedgerow, the sculptures revealed the artist’s attention to detail and his unerring sense of original, yet quirkily comfortable, composition.

But first you had to find them. Goodman generally sculpts with a refined line, not mass. Beautifully controlled, modulated, and articulated line. The artist’s energetic line, matte black and cast in fiberglass, might recall sumi e brushstrokes, almost calligraphic in their articulation of form against the lush green surroundings. Four of the five pieces are bravura displays of what the artist does best: creating sculptural presence from empty space. Never an outline; these linear pieces are forms consumed with defining space, and, more particularly, volume. And what volume!

 

As you approached the open side of "Wind," the artwork beckoned you forward and fairly begged you to step through its open “door.” But the visitor hesitated as they stood between the sculpture’s “leaves.” Once you’d entered this area, the edges of the sculpture disappeared from your peripheral vision. You were forced to crane your neck to follow the line and in this process survey the space – the volume – in which you stood. Of course, this piece, like several others in the group, worked as a framing device as well, providing a focus for our gaze as we surveyed the entire installation.

 

"Ray" and "Alcance" (translated from Spanish, Alance means Reach) are the two most clearly related works. "Ray" appears pyramidal (and, indeed, it might be instructive to compare it to Richard Hunt’s "Outgrown Pyramid II," which was sited not more that 30 yards away), but it is missing a third “foot”  which would make it so. Goodman casually referred to the piece as ‘jaws’ and the gaping opening could be a stand-in for a toothless Great White’s grin. Unlike "Wind," the scale of Ray discouraged entry; the space is uncomfortably angular and the apex of the vertical section stands about head-high on an adult. Again, the artist orchestrated our response to implied volume.

"Alcance is different altogether." It is significantly larger and its legs, catching the light on their softly curved flanks, seem to pulse. Modulated edges hint at interior movement of water or, perhaps, the growth pattern of some sort of stalk. Where "Ray" is all about open angles, "Alcance" is all about closing, as if the piece were about to snap shut if we ventured too close or too far inside. Its cantilevered, acute triangles seemed to push the limits of self support – seem to reach – to the point of uncomfortableness.

In the context of the aforementioned works, "Ballast" was almost the anti-Goodman work. Visually heavy, massed, and repeating, the piece made formal reference to Constantin Brancusi’s  "Endless Column" without quoting it. With "Ballast," the artist pushed himself, setting and reaching the goal of creating a work which sucked the viewer’s attention into its solidity, into the black, articulated mass of the work, refusing to trade on the ethereal openness of his other pieces in the exhibition. "Ballast" provided an excellent opportunity to examine Goodman’s surface treatment. We could see gentle scoring and scumbling of the original, wax surface that had been cast in fiberglass. This activates the matte black forms and reveals the hand of the artist.

Often, guileless simplicity can provide complex encounters. Take an ‘X’. Find a way to articulate it in 3-dimensional space. Knock it off balance. The open/closed form of "Four Corners" built on a simple theme creating movement and surprise as you examined the many interrelationships of form that occurred as planes and lines overlapped, intersected, and rearranged themselves with one-another.

Walking among these works, the visitor quickly recognized an inviting presence in the consistently original, yet comfortable, forms Neil Goodman presented. In this setting, visitors began or renewed their acquaintance with this artist’s sculpture and enjoyed the counterpoint of natural form which surrounded it. Experiencing "Neil Goodman in the Park" presented viewers with an opportunity unavailable within the confines of a gallery: the time and chance to search for and find these almost invisible artworks within the landscape. With his art, Neil Goodman asks us to move inside the work, to physically become part of his vision. We are happy to do so.  

Checklist of the exhibition

Alcance        
127 x 79 x 198
Ballast
36 x 175 x 36
Four Corners    
89 x 110 x 74
Ray
19 x 149 x 84
Wind
94 x 205 x 109
All works cast fiberglass. All works were made in 2004.

Neil Goodman
Born: 1953, Hammond, IN

Education
Tyler School of Art, Temple University,  (1977-1979) M.F.A. Sculpture and Ceramics, Philadelphia, PA
Kansas City Art Institute, (1977) Post Graduate Studies in Sculpture, Kansas City, MO
Indiana University, (1971-76) B.A. Fine Arts, Religious Studies, Bloomington, IN

Neil Goodman has exhibited his work both nationally and internationally, and has had numerous one-person exhibitions throughout the country. His sculpture has been commissioned and collected by museums, corporations, convention centers, parks, synagogues, universities, and private collectors. Goodman’s sculpture was included in the 1995 Museum of Contemporary Art’s opening exhibition entitled the “History of Chicago Art 1945-1995.”  His work has been written about and reviewed in numerous catalogs and periodicals including Art Forum,  Art in America,  Art News and Sculpture Magazine.

Neil Goodman lives in Chicago. He is currently represented by Perimeter Gallery.

Solo Exhibition Series:Sophie Ryder's Upside Down, Kneeling
May 1 - October 31, 2012

 
This is not Peter Rabbit.

While Sophie Ryder's menagerie of iconic and mythical beings may, at first glance, seem simply whimsical, while her work clearly reflects a traditional British interest in the animal world (see George Stubbs, or Francis Bacon, or Gooch, Garrard, or Ferneley, or yes, even Beatrix Potter), there is a post-Feminist edge present which elevates her artwork well past the invaders of Mr. McGregor's garden.

The hare is a nocturnal animal and widely associated with the phases of the moon as well as lust and fertility. Ryder's Lady-Hares are a personal invention - a bit of British wit, myth, and Surrealist sexuality. They are the artist's response to the Minotaur, which currently populates a host of video games but whose most important predecessor in art appeared as a recurrent symbol in Pablo Picasso's graphic work. While Picasso and numerous adolescent males fill their Minotaurs with masculine threat, Ryder's re-invented Minotaur exudes an attitude of protection, more partner than aggressor.

The wire-bound Lady-Hares seem available, but always on their terms. The scale has something to do with this . . . coming upon a Lady-Hare so large that we are dwarfed is, well, intimidating. With Upside Down, Kneeling Ryder presents us with her conundrum: Is this a woman wearing a full-head mask, or a mythic creature ready to mate?

Another astonishing aspect is the artist's command of an unruly material. Recognizing the expense and sheer difficulty of creating works this size in bronze (her early work is executed mostly in bronze), Ryder struck out on her own, developing and then mastering an approach in which she first establishes a solid stainless steel framework and then somehow coaxes and hammers skeins of wire into sculpture that looks rock solid from a distance but dissolves into a riot of gestural line as we approach.

Her mastery is evident in the "alive-ness" that she brings to her figure. The hands, feet, and head are rendered with remarkable subtlety. This becomes particularly evident in early morning or late afternoon sun. Then, we can observe Ryder's understanding of anatomy and gain a deeper appreciation of her achievement - that is, creating a personal, monumentally-scaled mythological universe and sharing it with us.

Checklist of the exhibition
Upside Down, Kneeling     2008
Sophie Ryder
galvanized wire over stainless steel frame
Dimensions: 84 x 122 x 109
On loan from Karen and Robert Duncan

Sophie Ryder
Born: 1963, London, England

Education
Ryder studied at Kingston Polytechnic and the Royal Academy Schools in London, England. 
Sophie Ryder's sculpture has been exhibited throughout Europe and North America. She is in the collections of numerous major museums and sculpture parks. The artist was the subject of Jonathan Benington's 2001 book Sophie Ryder, which includes interviews and extensive photography of both sculpture and the process by which Ryder creates.
Sophie Ryder lives with her daughters on Lampits Farm, in Cirencester, United Kingdom.
She is represented by Osborne Samuel Gallery in the U.K. and by Contessa Gallery in the United States.

Solo Exhibition Series:Sophie Ryder's Upside Down, Kneeling
May 1 - October 31, 2012

 
This is not Peter Rabbit.

While Sophie Ryder's menagerie of iconic and mythical beings may, at first glance, seem simply whimsical, while her work clearly reflects a traditional British interest in the animal world (see George Stubbs, or Francis Bacon, or Gooch, Garrard, or Ferneley, or yes, even Beatrix Potter), there is a post-Feminist edge present which elevates her artwork well past the invaders of Mr. McGregor's garden.

The hare is a nocturnal animal and widely associated with the phases of the moon as well as lust and fertility. Ryder's Lady-Hares are a personal invention - a bit of British wit, myth, and Surrealist sexuality. They are the artist's response to the Minotaur, which currently populates a host of video games but whose most important predecessor in art appeared as a recurrent symbol in Pablo Picasso's graphic work. While Picasso and numerous adolescent males fill their Minotaurs with masculine threat, Ryder's re-invented Minotaur exudes an attitude of protection, more partner than aggressor.

The wire-bound Lady-Hares seem available, but always on their terms. The scale has something to do with this . . . coming upon a Lady-Hare so large that we are dwarfed is, well, intimidating. With Upside Down, Kneeling Ryder presents us with her conundrum: Is this a woman wearing a full-head mask, or a mythic creature ready to mate?

Another astonishing aspect is the artist's command of an unruly material. Recognizing the expense and sheer difficulty of creating works this size in bronze (her early work is executed mostly in bronze), Ryder struck out on her own, developing and then mastering an approach in which she first establishes a solid stainless steel framework and then somehow coaxes and hammers skeins of wire into sculpture that looks rock solid from a distance but dissolves into a riot of gestural line as we approach.

Her mastery is evident in the "alive-ness" that she brings to her figure. The hands, feet, and head are rendered with remarkable subtlety. This becomes particularly evident in early morning or late afternoon sun. Then, we can observe Ryder's understanding of anatomy and gain a deeper appreciation of her achievement - that is, creating a personal, monumentally-scaled mythological universe and sharing it with us.

Checklist of the exhibition
Upside Down, Kneeling     2008
Sophie Ryder
galvanized wire over stainless steel frame
Dimensions: 84 x 122 x 109
On loan from Karen and Robert Duncan

Sophie Ryder
Born: 1963, London, England

Education
Ryder studied at Kingston Polytechnic and the Royal Academy Schools in London, England. 
Sophie Ryder's sculpture has been exhibited throughout Europe and North America. She is in the collections of numerous major museums and sculpture parks. The artist was the subject of Jonathan Benington's 2001 book Sophie Ryder, which includes interviews and extensive photography of both sculpture and the process by which Ryder creates.
Sophie Ryder lives with her daughters on Lampits Farm, in Cirencester, United Kingdom.
She is represented by Osborne Samuel Gallery in the U.K. and by Contessa Gallery in the United States.