A. Laurie Palmer, Class of 1981

Your sculptures and installations, exhibited in this country and in Europe, use a variety of materials to engage and challenge an audience that often becomes participants as well. It is work that, according to one reviewer, expresses an “ongoing interest in process site, renewal, and decay, creating a tension between domestic and public space as they relate to larger cultural and political histories.” This was said of work of the art collaborative known as Haha—comprised of you, Wendy Jacob, Richard House, and John Ploof—which has blurred the line between audience and artist in settings from the XLV Venice Biennale to the west side of Chicago. It was as part of Chicago’s Culture in Action program that Haha installed “FLOOD”—a water garden that built community by drawing neighbors into a powerful experience of issues of water, growth, food, work, collaboration, and caring. No longer acting as mere audience, participants grew food and shared the harvest with people dying with AIDS. You write frequently on the current art scene for such publications as Dialogue, Artforum, and New Art Examiner, while your own work exhibits a growing ability to visualize the condition and history of a community, distill it, and present it in ways that enable even those who live there to experience the place afresh.