Inside the San Diego Museum of Art, a 1,000-square-foot building made of particle board and stained glass looms tall over visitors. It's big — momentous even — for a sculpture, but intimate for a multi-room chapel." is a wooden building containing several small rooms, with arched walkways for museumgoers to enter and wander through the space. Thirty three vivid and intricate stained glass windows cast shadows of fractured, color-tinged patterns inside.
Sterling, a New York-based visual and performance artist born in Houston, begins his windows with found objects: abandoned but unbroken windows from a renovation or demolition, or left on the side of the road. Then, he throws a rock. As he repairs a window, he also adds color. After he throws a rock at a portrait, he stains each fragment of glass in varying hues, then"puzzles" the window back together in its original frame.Broken windows are at the heart of two distinct thematic influences to Sterling's work.
The alternate scenario is that the window is never broken, and the homeowners themselves can provide for their families or buy the new shoes, Sterling adds.