For sculptor Chakaia Booker, every act can be a work of art—including getting dressed in the morning. To start each day she adorns herself in swaths of colorfully printed fabric and rubber. This was the case when I met the Newark-born artist in 2003 at her studio, then in Harlem on 133rd Street. We spent the day with her filming the story featured in today's State of the Arts archive. Her studio was filled floor to ceiling with her medium of choice—stacks of recycled tires. She uses rubber to create massive, fluid, abstract sculptures. After our interview she took us on a walk to her favorite used tire shop a few blocks away and explained how she selects her materials. The rubber tire, she told us, is both a metaphor for travel and a statement about recycling in our industrial urban world. In her hands, it is also much more.
IT'S SO HARD TO BE GREEN, 2000, Rubber tires and wood
In the years since 2003, Chakaia has achieved widespread success. The New York Timesrecently covered her first survey show in over a decade, now at the Institute of Art in Miami through October 15. In New Jersey, you can find her work at the Newark Art Museum, the Montclair Art Museum, and in the Newark Library Collection. Farther afield, her sculptures are on display at the National Museum for Women in the Arts, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- State of the Arts Producer Eric Schultz
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