EASTON, Pa. — The Karl Stirner Arts Trail will welcome internationally acclaimed Chakaia Booker as their 2024-25 artist-in-residence with the premier of one of her most pivotal works and a special reception set for Sunday.
Booker will debut her new statue, "No More Milk and Cookies," at the KSAT’s Landis Cinema at Buck Hall, 219 North 3rd Street, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, September 15, followed by a reception at the sculpture, which will be installed this week on the trail’s Movie Hill near the dog park.
Panelists scheduled to speak at the event along with Booker include artist Berrisford Boothe, professor of art and architecture at Lehigh University and founding director/curator of the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection; artist Adama Delphine Fawundu, assistant professor of visual arts and director of graduate studies at Columbia University School of the Arts; artist Willie Cole; and Robert S. Mattison, Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art History Emeritus at Lafayette College.
"No More Milk and Cookies" is set to remain on the KSAT for at least two years. The sculpture, constructed from reclaimed rubber tires and wood, stands 14-and-a-half feet high, 29 feet long, and 24 feet deep.
Previously, "No More Milk and Cookies" was included in an exhibition of Booker’s sculpture at Strom King Arts Center in Mountainville, New York, in 2004 — a year after its initial premier — and subsequently at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts in 2010.
The KSAT will also hold workshops with Booker this fall, including a public event at the base of Movie Hill from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 12. A rain location for the event has been arranged at the Ahart Family Arts Plaza between Buck Hall and the Williams Visual Arts Building at the foot of College Hill.
During the workshop, collected, found objects and materials will be hammered, nailed, screwed, tied, and glued together into new works of art.
Guiding participants will be students in Lafayette’s Creative and Performing Arts Scholars program, along with Phillipsburg and Easton high school students in the Lafayette College art department’s Community-Based Teaching Program, which is led by Jim Toia, KSAT’s executive director and curator.
Booker, born in Newark, New Jersey in 1953, is well-known for her monumental, abstract works built from recycled tires and stainless steel, displayed in both the gallery and outdoor public spaces.
More than 40 public collections feature Booker’s works, which have been featured across the country, as well as in Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Recent public installation projects include Millennium Park, Chicago from 2016 to 2018; Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas, New York City in 2014; and National Museum of Women in the Arts New York Avenue Sculpture Project, Washington DC in 2012.
