A. Campbell Park is a linear urban public park maintained by Campbell Park LLC of the Kirkpatrick Family Fund under an agreement with the City of Oklahoma City through Parks and Recreation. Oklahoma Contemporary is responsible for programming Campbell Art Park, and has previously and successfully mounted four public art installations: Orly Genger: Terra (2014–2016), Tomas Saraceno: Cloud City (fall 2016), Erwin Redl: Whiteout (2018–2019) and Jen Lewin: Aqueous (2020). In summer 2021 we would like to continue our presentation to the Oklahoma City community of public artworks by internationally renowned artists with Chakaia Booker’s Shaved Portions.
Attached please find photographs showing the first four installations and proposed location for Shaved Portions.
B. Specially commissioned for Campbell Park, Chakaia Booker’s Shaved Portions will introduce a sculptural scale not previously seen in Campbell Art Park. With its soaring heights and gentle undulations, the monumental work of steel and recycled tires will stand sentinel atop Automobile Alley for ten months.
Optimizing the key aspects of sculpture, Shaved Portions offers different views from different angles and distances; and an interplay of mass, volume, and negative shapes. The overall silhouette of Booker’s installation will shift according to viewing perspective, including top view from the terrace or higher floors in neighboring buildings. The negative spaces serve as voids that then get filled by the people who walk through the installation. Oklahoma Contemporary is currently developing multiple works of dance and performance to interact with and activate the installation.
Modular armatures of stainless steel to be bolted together as the skeletal structure will be wrapped in the rubber tire ‘skin’ that has been a distinct feature of her work. Booker’s body of work remains rooted in the early days of her career, transforming urban detritus into biomorphic sculptures when she began to salvage rubber tires from the streets and discarded materials from construction sites in the early 1990s. Able to coax an intensity of feeling out of abstract shapes, Booker fashions into three- dimensional forms of staggering scale and incredible presence cast-off industrial scraps that would otherwise have languished as insignias of urban blight and measures of wanton waste.
Her profile featured in the National Museum of Women in the Arts website notes her career-long practice that “fuse(s) ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic differences, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages… Booker slices, twists, weaves, and rivets this medium into radically new forms and textures, which easily withstand outdoor environments. For her, the varied tones of the rubber parallels human diversity, while the tire treads suggest images as varied as African scarification and textile designs. The visible wear and tear on the tires evokes the physical marks of human aging.”
Chakaia Booker (b. 1953) received a BA in Sociology from Rutgers University and an MFA from the City College of New York. Her public art commissions include the Millennium Park in Chicago; the Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas in New York; and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. Her work is in more than 40 public collections and she has exhibited across the US, in Europe, Africa, and Asia. She is the recipient of grants, fellowships, and awards from numerous organizations such as the American Academy of Arts and Letters, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She lives in New York City and works in New York and Allentown, Pennsylvania.
C. + D. Attached please find the engineering drawings.
E. The artistic team at Oklahoma Contemporary, with the approval of the Exhibitions Committee and the Campbell Art Park Committee, selected this work as part of the Campbell Art Park programming. The exhibitions team at Oklahoma Contemporary includes: Jeremiah Matthew Davis, Artistic Director, Oklahoma Contemporary Carina Evangelista, Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oklahoma Contemporary Steve Boyd, Exhibitions Manager, Oklahoma Contemporary Pablo Barrera, Associate Curator, Oklahoma Contemporary
F. The installation is called Shaved Portions.
G. See “B” for Description of Work. Approximate dimensions of the sculpture 28' x 70' x 23', height x length x width. Materials are described in the attached engineering drawings.
G. Please see attached for artist bio.
H. Please see attached for artist statement.
I. Total value: $1,000,000
J. Please see attached for VARA agreement.
K. All insurance (liability and damage) will be covered by Oklahoma Contemporary.
L. Steve Boyd, Exhibitions Manager, will oversee the maintenance of the work.
M. Please see attached for art marker.
Chakaia Booker is a New York based International sculptor who has extensive experience in creating work for sculpture parks, as well as, work for recreational parks, gardens, indoor, outdoor, public and private areas in urban and rural settings. Her sculpture encompasses environmental and recycling issues. Architects, engineers, landscape architects, lighting designers, and most important, fabricators, have been a part of a team collaborating in all of the work. Repugnant Rapunzel (Let Down Your Hair) shown in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden at the White House demonstrates some of the issues involved. Most of the art is expressed in abstract forms. “It’s So Hard To Be Green” created from rubber tires and wood was included in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She has shown in major sculpture parks throughout the country, “A Moment In Time” is included in the Storm King Art Center permanent collection in rural New York and “Deja Vu” is a work shown in downtown Chicago IL. Her work is in the permanent collections of major art museums, for example “Raw Attraction” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City and in other public and private collections.
Statement My work continues to rise from an amalgam of cultural and aesthetic influences and interests. Thinking of meaning and the tire as a conceptual analogy, I think in terms of mobility, texture, movement, softness, power and strength. My intention is to translate simple yet complex materials into imagery that stimulates people to reconsider the expressive nature of art and how broad complex cultural transformations can continue to be expressed through common materials. My desire is to create, through whatever materials I choose in exploring my ever changing voice.
Proposed site for Shaved Portions
Installation will be on the center section of Campbell Art Park.
Previous installations on that site
Tomas Saraceno, Cloud City
Orly Genger, Terra
Erwin Redl, Whiteout
Jen Lewin, Aqueous
24” 27” 60”
EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION dotted lines represent radius - DETAILS OF ARTWORK bend in sheet metal -ARTIST STATEMENT, ETC
24” 36”
A South (side) Elevation A North (side)Elevation 1 2
A East (front) Elevation OK CONTEMPORARY 3 CAMPBELL PARK EDUCATIONAL MARKER
Educational marker is formed of one sheet of 3/16” steel, bent with radius bends (4”radius), bolted to existing
concrete pad/foundation (provided by others) SPONSOR RECOGNITION GOES HERE Primed and painted with Mathews Paint for maximumdurability/colorfastness Alternate design includes steel square tube posts (capped) referencing the existing marker on OK CONTEMPORARY property. 4 posts on the south (left) side, 6 on the north (right) side Posts, in addition to referencing existing sign design, prevents A West (back) Elevation 4 ‘urban camping’ underneath sign in inclement weather. Also 4 and 6 posts pay homage to Oklahoma’s sequence of state hood (46th state) lettering/artwork to be vinyl lettering, nal text to be determined
A South (side) Elevation A South (side) Elevation 2.2 ALTERNATE WITH SIDE POSTS 1.2 ALTERNATE WITH SIDE POSTS
718 WEST SHERIDAN OKLAHOMA CITY OKLAHOMA, 73102 405 290.7676 WWW.OBELISKENGINEERING.COM
STAMP:
10/06/20
CA # 3594 - expires 06/30/21
’
1 SECTION S1 SCALE: CLIENT: CONTEMPORARY OKLAHOMA PROJECT: OKLAHOMA CITY, OK SMALL AND SHARED
REVISIONS:
JOB NUMBER: 2658-20 DATE: 10.06.2020 DRAWN BY: APPR BY: JDB LM SHEET TITLE: GENERAL NOTES
S1 718 WEST SHERIDAN OKLAHOMA CITY OKLAHOMA, 73102 405 290.7676 WWW.OBELISKENGINEERING.COM
STAMP:
10/06/20
CA # 3594 - expires 06/30/21
’ CLIENT: CONTEMPORARY OKLAHOMA PROJECT: OKLAHOMA CITY, OK SMALL AND SHARED
REVISIONS:
JOB NUMBER: 2658-20 FOUNDATION PLAN DATE: SCALE: 1/4"=1'-0" 10.06.2020 DRAWN BY: APPR BY: JDB LM SHEET TITLE:
S2 Shaved portions Attachment process 05 06 2021
Alston van putten Chakaia booker arta 327 north madison street Allentown p.a. 18102
Overview
This is a show of attachment methods used to make and assemble this sculpture. 1
Attachments: 1. 2” x 5/8” ss bolts, nuts and lock washers used to attach the sculpture to the base channels.
2. Pentetrator earth anchors 48” used to secure the (18) c9 x 20 x 80” channels to the compacted ground. Two 2 ½” holes drilled for the anchors to be received. 3. 6” x ½” grade 8 bolts, nuts and washers used to attach member to member there 8 bolts at each attachment point. 2
the 2 ½” x 2 ½” x ¼” 304 stainless steel tubings being attached.
4. #12 hex head stainless self tapping screws used to attach the tires to the stainless steel armature pre drilled and tapped. 5. #8 and #10 stainless steel bugle head screws used to attach tire to tire throughout the sculpture.
Specifcations
Some photos to support the description: will be added 3