Photo by Roberto Mata
“I’m interested in how sculpture and fiber-arts is enacted as a facet of personhood- how craft can be utilized as a modality that mines the local, global, and historical, to devise novel forms.
Growing up with disparate cultural family backgrounds gave me a unique experience of culture that I believe still actively plays a role in my artistic decisions- I enact craft as an inheritance. It is a process that I think of as ‘making-home.”
Sterling Rook is a Miami native with Masters in Fine Art from Florida International University. He works out of his studio at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, Florida.
Rook’s work uses his skills in metalwork and fabric to further expand the language of sculpture and fiber-art. Forged and welded steel, painted palm fronds, and handmade rope from used clothing, all factor in for Rook in as avenues expanding this visual vocabulary.
This visual-vocabulary is enriched through working within a family legacy of fiber-crafts: On the maternal/Peruvian side of his family, his grandmother was a re-weaver, and his grandfather was a tailor. His paternal/British grandfather’s last name was “Stringer,” which is a British historical-occupational name for one who made rope or string. Rook uses these as beacons to explore art-making as both a generative and regenerative process, which is like tapestry that interprets and combines histories in the creation of an artwork. Using these markers as a compass, his work bridges gaps within disparate cultural heritages connecting past to present.