Rice’s newest sculpture encourages unconventional ‘repair’

By Juliana Lightsey     4/1/25 11:37pm

A white-tiled geometric sculpture sits on the outer corner of the academic quad, between Lovett and Herzstein Halls. A variety of materials – string, pins, ribbon – are housed on the structure in plastic containers.

According to Julia Gartrell, the artist behind the installation, the work is titled “Repair Station,” and represents a collaboration between the Moody Center the Arts’ Platform series and the Humanities Research Center, whose 2023-2025 theme is “Repair.”

Gartrell said she imagines students will use the repair station materials to mend everyday objects, such as torn pieces of clothing. However, the artist also intentionally infuses a theme of unconventional repair into the installation. 

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One such example is found in the color of all the materials provided: a bright, almost fluorescent yellow, which will cause the repairs to stand out rather than blend in, Gartrell said.

“Yellow is this color of alert and safety, it’s very intentionally visible,” Gartrell said. “It highlights the repair, it’s going to be a very present thing … I like that it will start to trickle out along campus.”

Gartrell’s sculpture was inspired in part by her ‘Radical Repair Workshop,’ a traveling interactive repair shop and gallery operating out of a renovated vintage camper. 

Gartrell started the workshop in 2020, and her emphasis on unconventional repair was a consistent theme throughout the project.

“Everyone has some kind of relationship to repair, and we hang on to things that are broken,” Gartrell said. “Part of the goal of my project was to get people talking about those things, and [to do] some repair that was functional but also, for things that were beyond functional repair, figuring out a way to memorialize the item.”

One such notable ‘repair’ came at a ceramic repair workshop series Gartrell did at Duke University, where a student brought a broken sculpture that had belonged to a deceased relative.

“She was really tormented by having this thing, by it being broken and feeling unfinished,” Gartrell said. “And so she smashed it to smithereens, and then took all those pieces and re-fabricated a new item. It was really cathartic for her.”

Gartrell’s formal artistic training is in sculpture, but she said much of her research and interest in repurposing or mending objects was inspired by her ancestry.

“In grad school I did a lot of research into Appalachian craft,” Gartrell said. “My dad’s side of the family [was] in rural Georgia – subsistence farmers. If you’re really isolated, really rural, really poor, there’s a creativity that comes along with that.”

Traditional craftsmanship, born out of necessity, is a skill that Gartrell said she believes is dying out in a contemporary age of consumerism.

“We live in an insane time where there’s no limitations on materials or things,” Gartrell said. “What happens when we’re skipping multiple generations who don’t know how to sew a button on?”

These themes connect to the physical elements of Gartrell’s installation, which she said reflects her vision of a society where publicly-subsidized repair stations are commonplace.

“Tile is this really ubiquitous material: you see it in subways, you see it in bathrooms, you see it in public parks … I wanted it to be plausible that a city parks and rec would be able to manufacture one of these things,” Gartrell said. “What if the concept of the repair was something that was supported publicly?”

Gartrell’s “Repair Station” will be on view at Rice through May 10. 

Alongside the materials provided, the sculpture includes QR codes to a variety of mending tutorials, as well as videos documenting the history of cultural craft – which she hopes will inspire students to think differently about their broken or worn-down objects.

“It is so nice to sit and fix something and say ‘hey, I did that,’”  Gartrell said. “I think part of the purpose of being on a college campus is to shake people up a little bit. A lot of people are doing a lot of heavy academic lifting, and sometimes just the act of doing something with your hands can unlock some new idea.”

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