Since mid-April, a 35-foot-tall labyrinth of steel and rubber has loomed over the storefronts of Manhattans Garment District.
Surrounded by towering buildings, the installation winds through the pedestrian plaza on Broadway between 39th and 40th streets.
It is a striking pairing, this artwork and the city around it.
Chakaia Booker photographed in front ofShaved Portions,her public sculpture now on view in Manhattan’s Garment District.
Chakaia BookersShaved Portionswill be on view in the Garment District’s Broadway plaza until November 1.
Chakaia Booker,Conflicting Issues,2023.
Raw materials are only limited in their potential by our own imaginations, Booker reflects.
Chakaia Booker’sShaved Portionswill be on view in the Garment District’s Broadway plaza until November 1.
Its imagination that keeps me going.
What she developed is an approach all her own, says her galleristDavid Nolan: There is nobody else.
Booker now sources tires from wherever she can: donations, city streets, landfills, auto shops.
Chakaia Booker,Conflicting Issues,2023.
The tires themselves arrive in various states of use, wear, and decay.
Booker with one of her prints at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
Booker is also a photographer, ceramist, printmaker, and painter.
Booker with one of her prints at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
Edges blur, colors overlap, and hand embossing animates the borders.
You cannot work at the printmaking workshop without feeling Bobs presence, Booker says.
In 2021 she was the subject of asolo exhibitionat the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.
Through this October, her work is also on view atThe Current in Stowe, Vermont.
Art takes time to make, she says.
Take the time to look.
What we get from the work as artists keeps us going.
What you get from it can keep you going too.
