Loop To Get Bold Wraps Of Color This Summer

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 17, 2012 3:00PM

The Chicago Loop Alliance announced at their annual meeting last night they have tapped renowned visual artist Jessica Stockholder to create this year's Art Loop installation.

Stockholder described "Color Jam" as "my idea to fill an intersection with color." Four downtown buildings and a to-be-determined intersection will be "wrapped" by Stockholder's painting, sculpture and possibly even fabric a la Christo to give pasersby the impression they're walking through an animated film.

Stockholder's artwork is known for her use of bold. Her artist's statement reads:

"I began, and still do begin, with a love for color and unrelenting interest in the intersection of a pictorial way of looking, (or thinking,) with the physical matter of the body and the materiality of things in space. I continue to be interested in how experience of the physical world, its form, and our form determine how and what we are capable of thinking. Both the structure of our perceptual apparatus (eyes, brain, size) and the given nature of the cosmos are the foundation for thought and understanding. Following from these givens we humans use metaphor to build elaborate abstract and concrete structures to live within. In this way I find form to be full of significance. "

Her artwork has been displayed at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Dia Center for the Arts, Chelsea Art Museum and the Mitchell-Innes & Nash Gallery, Milan's Galleria Raffaela Cortese, among American and international venues. She was named head of the University of Chicago's Department of Visual Arts last summer. Stockholder's "color Jam" will debut in June and remain in place through September.

"Color Jam" is the third Art Loop installation, following last year's "GO DO GOOD" installation by Kay Rosen last year and the giant fiberglass eyeball that graced Pritzker Park two years ago by Tony Tasset.