JESSICA STOCKHOLDER: GRAB GRASSY THIS MOMENT YOUR I'S

Laumeier presents an exhibition of recent sculpture by Jessica Stockholder. The exhibition features eleven sculptures full of quirks and unexpected materials. Stockholder’s work engages elements of painting, sculpture and architecture with objects more commonly found in backyards and living rooms. Her playful nature is reflected in the name of the exhibition, Grab grassy this moment your I’s. The title offers an abstract puzzle emblematic of her work that strives to change how we see common objects and materials.

The exhibition includes Stockholder’s work, Flooded Chambers Maid, 2009–10, installed in the Children’s Sculpture Garden in October 2010. The long-term loan was commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy and was previously exhibited in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park. The work will provide a platform for future performances, readings and children’s programs.

As the Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, arts education plays a critical role in Stockholder’s work. A reading and media room where patrons can learn more about her visual vernacular and use of language accompanies the exhibition. Generous support from Alison and John Ferring allows Laumeier to work with TOKY Branding + Design, St. Louis, to produce an artist book that pairs images of Stockholder’s work with interpretive poems by St. Louis poet Mary Jo Bang.

SPONSORS + SUPPORTERS

Jessica Stockholder: Grab grassy this moment your I's is supported by St. Louis County Parks, the Regional Arts Commission, Missouri Arts Council, the Arts and Education Council of St. Louis, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Alison and John Ferring, the Moonrise Hotel and the Mark Twain Laumeier Endowment Fund. 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Jessica Stockholder was born in Seattle in 1959 and grew up in Vancouver. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and her M.F.A. from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1985. Stockholder is a pioneer in multimedia, genre-bending installations that have become prominent language in contemporary art. Stockholder’s complex works incorporate the architecture in which they have been conceived, blanketing the floor, scaling the walls and ceiling—even spilling out of the windows, through the doors and into the surrounding landscape. Stockholder’s installations, sculptures and collages affirm the primacy of pleasure, the blunt reality of things and the rich heterogeneity of life. Her work has been exhibited at the Dia Center for the Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art and PS1, New York; SITE Santa Fe; the Venice Biennale; the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.