Tabula | Michelle Stuart

Here’s a school where art is literally built into the educational experience. At the edge of Manhattan, in Stuyvesant High School's impressive 1992 building, art is integrated into a high-tech, state-of-the art public high school. With Tabula, the artist Michelle Stuart, celebrated for large-scale works using down-to-earth natural materials, has created a stunning marble "relief" sculpture to be enjoyed by students (and the lucky tourist who can enter the lobby). Consisting of more than 30 separate marble panels, each about 2 feet x 2 feet, this sculpture and other artworks situated in the new building (notably, Mnemonics by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel), were designed in tandem with the architects refining plans for the new building.

Stuart chose to incorporate themes of discovery. Inspired by textures and colors of stones from construction yards, she selected different colored marble from around the world. In the building's lobby, six panels portray historical views of science and discovery, from the history of Arabic numerals to early maps of the cosmos. The panels' delicate etchings detailing different systems of knowledge blend subtly with the other materials used in the lobby.

The California-born artist is fascinated by the way we experience surfaces, and by the interplay of the material and the metaphysical. A pioneer in using organic media, she's worked with natural materials such as earth, wax, seeds and plants, not to mention ash, fossils and archaeological shards. Her wide-ranging interests in archaeology, anthropology, map-making, botany, biology, exploration, literature and history are also reflected in her works -- which include large-scale earthworks, complex multimedia installations, drawings and prints, and, of course, sculptures such as those seen in Stuyvesant's hallways. Her art is exhibited widely, and can be found in museum collections around the country (in New York: MoMA).

Tabula was commissioned for Stuyvesant High School by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Art Program and by the New York City Board of Education Public Art for Public Schools Program, and the Battery Park City Authority. It won a New York City Art Commission Award for Design.

By Kathie