Chakaia Booker: Public Opinion

Chakaia Booker is a New York-based artist. She is best known for her pioneering use of recycled rubber tires as a raw material for making abstract sculpture, often at a monumental scale. Booker merges ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and gender. The artist’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the US, in Europe and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Her current show at David Nolan Gallery, Public Opinion, is open through June 23.

David Nolan is an Irish gallerist who specializes in modern and contemporary art. Nolan began his career in 1980 at Michael Werner Gallery, Cologne, and moved to New York in 1983 to work with Ileana Sonnabend. In 1987 he opened David Nolan Gallery, juxtaposing work made in a variety of media by international artists from different generations and cultures, as well as mounting tightly-curated historical exhibitions. The gallery represents contemporary artists as they build their careers along with mature late-career artists and a number of estates; mounts up to 8 exhibitions per year, frequently accompanied by scholarly monographs; and participates in international art fairs.

Phil Sanders is a collaborative master printer, author, educator, and artist. Sanders founded and directs, PS Marlowe, a fine art print publishing and consulting firm based in Asheville, NC and recently authored Prints and Their Makers (Princeton Architectural Press, 2020). Sanders served as COO of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and Director/Master Printer of its program, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York City and worked as the master printer and studio director of Universal Limited Art Editions. Sanders has taught at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, and Penland School of Craft and has lectured extensively internationally.

Writer and strategist Lee Ann Norman loves to tell good stories about the arts in our everyday. Her scholarly investigations and creative yarns highlight an interest in designing spaces that allow people to learn about each other and themselves through the arts. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including BOMB, Studio, the Studio Museum of Harlem’s magazine, and the Penn GSE Journal on Urban Education, and the Brooklyn Rail. Lee Ann studied art criticism and writing at the School of Visual Arts. She is currently based in New York.

Artist, writer, and independent curator Tom McGlynn is based in the NYC area. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian. He is the director of Beautiful Fields, an organization dedicated to socially-engaged curatorial projects, and is also currently a visiting lecturer at Parsons School of Design, The New School. McGlynn’s work is interested in the morphing of commercial signage into cyphers of phenomenal experience—minimalist, abstract arrangements of color. He holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from the Ramapo College of New Jersey. Tom is an Editor-at-Large for the Brooklyn Rail.