Everything Jessica Stockholder touches turns to art.
Over the past three decades this has included worn-out couches, an urban intersection, refrigerator doors, a scissors lift, fresh oranges and lemons, a compact car, a mattress, a streetlight, a bathtub, a full-size freezer chest, half-a-dozen wooden dressers and a city park.
Does Stockholder, who was born in Seattle in 1959 and has since 2012 chaired the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, have a contemporary version of the Midas touch? Her prolificness in recent years suggests this might be more than just a rhetorical question. It sometimes seems that Stockholder turns out an impressive new installation every month.