As a conceptual analogy, I usually start with the rubber tire itself. It’s about mobility, growth. They’ve used it on the moon. In a large way, it’s our method of communication. For example, a wall or relief using old tires suggests archaeological finds and the deciphering of patterns and textures into new languages or new symbols. The tire-making industry says that the patterns in the tires function to “wick away water” in wet weather. But where did the idea come from? Where does information begin? These same patterns may have been a means of communication some time in the past; they may translate into a way of writing, a language or physical tool that actually performs. Something of an analogy for this can be seen in the translation of pictographs into jewelry.

My intention is to translate materials into imagery that will stimulate people to consider themselves as a part of their environment— one piece of it. Whether I use an architectural format or something to look at, I believe art should dialogue with viewers.

For sculptor Chakaia Booker, her first career-guiding artistic inspiration was a kind of baptism by fire. Thirty years ago, during the city’s rough old days, she was living in an East Village apartment (the same one she inhabits today), and the streets were burning. Trash, buildings, and especially cars – each night, it seemed, flames engulfed another one. Booker, in her late twenties and itching to express herself, was intrigued – not by the destruction, but by the transformation of the cars’ tires. “Once they would burn, you would get different effects,” she says, recalling the attraction of the melted tread. “I would go by these cars after they cooled and just begin to scrape off what I could.”

So began a penchant for scavenged rubber, and so began a life assembling the strips and shreds of discarded Goodyears and Firestones into intricate, elaborate, widely acclaimed sculpture: towering plant-like forms, delicate works of interlocked Möbius strips small enough to hold, and giant tangles of looping tendrils, like the 20-foot-high relief, It’s So Hard to Be Green, exhibited at the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

Though its black and sometimes menacing surfaces are reminiscent of the busy, hard-edged work by Louise Nevelson – another assembler of discarded material, and an admitted influence – Booker’s sculpture has a fully organic presence. The rubber’s softness, its reptilian textures, and all the non-Euclidean shaping suggest some complicated life form – born of urban turmoil, and now projecting it. Booker talks about incorporating a grand vision into her work, what she calls “the constant composition of the street and the alley and the people between the sky and the earth – it’s all one”. That vision plays out, for example, in The Feeding of Men, a ragged cluster of tire strips intended to represent, Booker says, the effects of over-stimulation, of “energy tucked away behind the scenes.”

All that life in her sculpture emerges from a process of brute-strength destruction. Before she can start manipulating the rubber – slicing, bending, twisting – she has to extract it. In her studio (a sprawling old laundry facility in Pennsylvania), she muscles up industrial tools to rip the tires apart. “It takes a lot of body work,” laughs Booker, who explains how she must first cut through their structural bands of steel. “The tires can weigh 15 to 20 pounds, and you’re going through thousands of them.” They come from streets and landfills, from cars, vans, and trucks. Recently, for a NASA-commissioned memorial project, she disassembled a tire once used by the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia.

Sculpture isn’t just Booker’s métier – it’s a kind of mission. “When I get up each day, I begin with myself, as far as sculpting myself,” she says, and means it. About six feet tall, Booker stands in her East 9th Street apartment displaying one example of her self-styled daily wear: a giant headpiece of multicolored yarn, layered into an oblong mound that covers all but the oval of her face. On other occasions, she slips on her rubber designs – necklaces of vests constructed from inner tubes that resemble accoutrements from steam-punk sci-fi. Her unconventional dress, which she hopes to turn into a fashion line, goes back to her New Jersey childhood, when she was sewing, like other family members, but ignoring the rules: “When I had my idea, I didn’t care about the color, I didn’t care about the material. Chop, cut, slit, and I got it on and I’m down the street.”

That extemporaneous approach is now what impresses the art world, bringing in honors and commissions from all over. Despite the attention, Booker holds a fondness for the early days that propelled her into sculpture. “Sure, there were all those problems,” she says, “but the stimulation of this area was just terrific. Right now, it seems very quiet and very” – she drops to a whisper – “dead!” That is, until Chakaia Booker steps out – an imposing embodiment of art, in search of another useful tire.

by Robert Shuster

As expected, the four sculptures by Chakaia Booker in the garden at the Katonah Museum of Art provide the most stimulating experience of outdoor art in Westchester right now. Not only does Ms. Booker, 56, possess a natural eye for expressive forms, but her materials — cast-off rubber tires from cars, trucks and tractors — are manipulated with such zeal as to suggest a vivid essay on how to make art from unorthodox materials.

The variety of the pieces further testifies to her command of sculptural techniques, control of detail and versatility as an outdoor sculpture specialist. Many artists have produced excellent outdoor public sculptures, but I can think of only a few who have been as successful — and over such a long period of time — as Ms. Booker. Part of that success comes from the material she uses, which is ideally suited to art in an outdoor environment.

Ms. Booker is often characterized as an abstract sculptor. But she is more. Her distinctive, powerfully convulsive forms often remind you of something organic — possibly human, floral or even marine. Take “Gridlock” (2008), a pair of twisted vertical forms, concave on one side and feathered with hundreds of triangular shards of cut tire on the other, convex side. They look like a discarded snake skin or the unwound strands of a DNA helix.

Whatever their meaning or original inspiration, the strength of the forms lies in contrasting textures. The forthrightness of the razor-sharp exterior feathers seems to caution us “to remain at a safe distance,” as Lowery Stokes Sims writes in the show’s catalog, while the finely woven, skin-like surface on the concave sides seems to invite us to inspect how the sculptures were made. From any distance, though, it is remarkable to think that such elegant objects were made from a bunch of old tires.

“Cross Over Effects” (2003), the earliest piece here, is probably the most physically and visually satisfying — partly because the artist’s decisions on balance, scale and style look and feel most persuasive, and partly because it is the only work in the exhibition in which Ms. Booker takes advantage of the decorative potential of the tire treads. Abundant, looping slivers of tire protrude from a base of elaborately cut tire “feathers” resting atop a pole-like base.

“Take Out” and “Pass the Buck,” the other sculptures, are from 2008. Like “Gridlock,” they reveal the growing importance of structural armatures in Ms. Booker’s most recent work, for in contrast to her earlier works, in which the shapes evolved organically, the new pieces consist of a preconceived frame onto which the artist has attached her tire shards. The earlier work has more emotion and a real rawness, but the pre-constructed frames allow Ms. Booker to explore a far greater range and complexity of sculptural shapes.

“Take Out,” for instance, consists of a photo-frame shape decorated with a profusion of sprouting tendrils and other swirling, loop-like shapes. It is a lot of fun, even though to my eye it is not installed to its best advantage in the garden, set against a tangle of trees, for the shape creates a perfect picture window through which to view the world. It would look a lot better framing the view from a beach house in the Hamptons, or looking out over a leafy Westchester estate.

“Pass the Buck” is an unusual work for several reasons. First, there is the basic design, consisting of a tight ball of interlocking circular elements. Then there is its bland surface quality, a uniform skin of flattened, interwoven pieces of rubber, instead of the more familiar feathers or expressive tendrils that tend to characterize the artist’s greatest achievements. This work looks by contrast almost aerodynamic, like a piece of streamlined designer furniture.

What it does not look like is a sculpture made out of tires, which, for me, lessens its appeal. Still, the artist has put the material together with greater subtlety and fewer awkward joins. It also has its own special, sensitive mood of sturdy reverie, as opposed to the monumental power of the larger, more elaborate pieces. Even though I am not sure I like this sleeker, less ornate work, I sense and respect the experimental moment it embodies and look forward to seeing more.

by Benjamin Genocchio

New York-based artist Chakaia Booker doesn't own a car, yet she has spent well over a decade transforming used tires into works of art. The contradiction seems fitting for this eco-friendly artist, whose riotous, rubber sculptures are the focus of a pair of exhibitions in Kansas City, MO and Indianapolis this summer.

Like John Chamberlain with his twisted metal bumpers, Ms. Booker is known for expressing her fascination with America's car culture by slashing, feathering and repurposing thousands of tiresthat she salvages each year from the country's curbs and highways. She first caught the art world's attention at the 2000 Whitney Biennial with her installation, "It's So Hard To Be Green," a 25-foot-wide mass of tire tendrils that hung from the museum wall like an inky coral reef. Since then, her sculptures have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and have been sold in galleries for between $20,000 and $300,000 apiece.

Now, a couple of dozen recent works are at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, in a survey, "RubberMade," up through Aug. 17. At first glance, the pieces appear abstract, but several works have actually been twisted into whimsical shapes like floral bouquets, totem poles, and even a lounging cat. Whatever their form, curator Christopher Cook says his staff had to wear thick gloves and goggles during the installation to avoid being cut by the steel shards embedded in radial tires. "Chakaia certainly works with unforgiving material that bites back," Mr. Cook says.

For precisely that reason, Ms. Booker couldn't use her regular radials for the public art project she unveiled Tuesday in Indianapolis. Instead, she got Michelin to donate tires made without steel linings, which she used to create some of the 10 sculptures for the Arts Council of Indianapolis. Each work echoes aspects of the city's history: A lantern-shaped piece called "Plus or Minus?" was inspired by the city's role in the Underground Railroad. A lattice-like piece called "Gridlock" sits at the edge of an intersection along U.S. 40 and also nods to the city's status as a racing capital.

"Her work is just so strong and unusual, and yet it's accessible," says Mindy Taylor Ross, the council's director of public art.

Tires are also readily available. Ms. Booker, a New Jersey native, says she initially started picking up tire remnants near burned-out cars while living in New York during the 1980s. Beyond their usefulness as found objects, she liked their varying tread patterns, which reminded her of fabric designs her family used when they made their own clothes. Tires would be a way for her to explore America's mobility, upward or otherwise, she decided. "Painters have a palette of colors that give their work energy," she says. "My palette has textures."

by Kelly Crow

This exquisite exhibition of Chakaia Booker’s shape-shifting sculptures created over the past six years encompassed worked both massive and small. While the artist has established herself as the Queen of Rubber, using discarded tires as her primary material since the mid-1990s, she has come up with something new in each endeavor. Booker varies her technique – chopping, slicing, shredding, curling – and transforms her dense, dull material into pliant and highly emotional creations.

Holla (email), 2008, is a shaggy dragon of a sculpture, towering eight feet in the air, covered in rubber scales, and surrounded by ferocious fins curling across the ground. The piece resonated with Never Mind (2006), a smaller work, which looks like a boar’s head pierced through the neck by a post. Sculptures like these feel almost like archeological finds, dug up from a civilization with a distinctive, idiosyncratic mythology. Across the room, One Way (2008) stood tall, its pair of interlocking curves forming a vulval opening with short lengths of rubber drilled into place like roofing tiles. From up close the sculpture read as a gaping hole, but from a distance it appeared as a sensuous study in geometry.

Paintings were also on view. These were black-paint-on-white-paper works, chopped into various shapes and reconfigured on wood panels. While Random Choice (2009), consisting of circles and scratches, was too refined to evoke chaos, its companion piece, Graffiti (2009), nearly leapt off the wall, with thick black squiggles cut out and pasted onto its surface. Booker often refers to social issues and African American culture in her projects, but here the works were so finely wrought and complex as to defy interpretation.

by Barbara Pollack