Two and a half years in the making, Graft Knoxville, sited at the former Morrow’s Quarry (located on the western portion of the UTGA&EC) consists of three interrelated Corten steel bench modules and includes three polished white marble benches, cut from an abandoned block from the quarry site. Soto’s sculpture incorporates the geometric designs of iron Rejas screens popular throughout her native Puerto Rico.
Edra Soto’s internationally recognized work is transformative. Her use of the Rejas form is at once expansive and personal in scale. Throughout the course of her work, Soto has engaged the public through many architectural interventions. For Graft Knoxville, she responded to the rolling topography of the sculpture site with a work that anticipates visitors and offers a space of contemplative rest.
Edra Soto, “Graft Knoxville”, 2022, University of Tennessee/GATOP Arboretum & Education Center
Project Partners
Edra Soto’s Graft Knoxville project was organized and curated by Tri-Star Arts. Tri-Star Arts gratefully acknowledges the generosity and shared vision of the project partners: Dr. Alan Solomon, Johnson & Galyon Construction, Mallia Engineering Company, Sanders Pace Architecture, Tennessee Marble Company, UT Fab Lab, UT Department of Plant Sciences, UT School of Art, UT Sculpture program, and numerous hard working UT students, staff, and alumni.
About the Artist
Edra Soto is a Puerto-Rican born artist, curator, educator, and co-director of the outdoor project space, The Franklin. Soto has exhibited extensively at venues including El Museo del Barrio, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art's satellite, The Momentary, AR; Albright-Knox Northland, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, IL; Smart Museum, IL and the Abrons Arts Center, NY. Recently, Soto completed a large-scale public art commission titled Screenhouse, currently on view at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois. The artist has attended residency programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Beta-Local, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, Headlands Center for the Arts, Project Row Houses and Art Omi, among others. Soto has been awarded the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, the Illinois Arts Council Agency Fellowship, the inaugural Foundwork Artist Prize and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, among others. Between 2019-2020, Soto exhibited and traveled to Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund. Soto holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico. The artist lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.