Michelle Stuart

Since the late sixties, American artist Michelle Stuart (born 1938) has become internationally known and respected for a rich and diverse body of work based on her lifelong interest in the natural world and the cosmos. Her multifaceted creativity and broad range of inspirations have led to her working in fields as diverse as drawing, sculpture, photography, video, installation and site-specific earthworks. Throughout her career, she has pursued a subtle and responsive dialogue with the natural world quite unlike the epic, at times seemingly grandiose, gestures of much contemporary Land Art. During the seventies she became associated with the feminist art movement, co-founding the journal Heresies with Lucy Lippard. Along with wide-ranging insights into Stuart’s choice of media and subject matter, this book emphasizes Stuart’s radical redefinition of the medium of drawing.

Whether an earth-rubbed book object infused with soil from Canyon de Chelly or a multimedia work depicting crossroads of trade in the Yucatan, Michelle Stuart's art conveys a sense of cultural history and distant places. This intimate, visually stunning volume focuses on the artist's small sculptures and sculptural installations. Opening with an introduction by critic Lucy Lippard, whose decades-long friendship with Stuart gives her unique insight into her practice, the book features journal entries interspersed among its 160 illustrations, conveying an eloquent sense of time and process. Since the early 1970s, Stuart has pioneered highly regarded approaches involving the unusual use of materials such as earth-rubbed paper and the use of seeds as medium and subject matter. She has won international acclaim for her inquiries into nature, blending an interest in archaeology, biology, cosmology and history. Sculptural Objects provides a glimpse not only of what inspires Stuart's artmaking but also of the journey a creative mind takes in solving the mysteries of being.