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17 Facts About Chakaia Booker

1.

Chakaia Booker was born on 1953 and is an American sculptor known for creating monumental, abstract works for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces.

2.

Chakaia Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Art in 2001.

3.

Chakaia Booker has lived and worked in New York City's East Village since the early 1980s and maintains a production studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

4.

Chakaia Booker is best known for her innovative and signature use of recycled rubber tires, her primary sculptural material.

5.

In 2009, Chakaia Booker began an in depth exploration of printmaking creating a significant body of graphic works, largely focused on the process of chine colle.

6.

Chakaia Booker was born in 1953 in Newark, New Jersey and raised in neighboring East Orange, New Jersey.

7.

Chakaia Booker learned to sew from her grandmother, aunt, and sister.

8.

Chakaia Booker received a BA in sociology from Rutgers University in 1976 and an MFA from the City College of New York in 1993.

9.

Chakaia Booker has studied African dance, ceramics, weaving, basketry, and tai chi, all of which have influenced her art.

10.

Chakaia Booker has lived and worked in New York City's East Village since the early 1980s.

11.

Chakaia Booker maintains a production studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania for fabrication of large-scale and public works.

12.

Chakaia Booker has served on the boards of the International Sculpture Center and Socrates Sculpture Park.

13.

For example, Chakaia Booker's 2001 piece "Wench III" is a surrealistic sculpture that subverts a very masculine mechanic's wrench into a feminine feather boa.

14.

Chakaia Booker has participated in both group and solo exhibitions in such places as the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Akron Museum of Art, Marlborough gallery, the Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, and the PS 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, as well as in the "Twentieth Century American Sculpture" exhibition held at the White House in 1996.

15.

On June 22,2008, Chakaia Booker unveiled "Chaikaia Chakaia Booker: Mass Transit" in Indianapolis, Indiana.

16.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts has exhibited her works in The New York Avenue Sculpture Project, FOREFRONT: Chakaia Booker, and Reaching for the Stars through Art.

17.

Chakaia Booker is one of nine contemporary artists with work on display at the Renwick Gallery's Wonder Gallery in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC The sculpture on display was "It's So Hard to be Green," which was exhibited at the 2000 Whitney Museum Biennial.