Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Style: Conceptual Art;

Place: Denver

Born: 1939

Biography:

Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a New York City-based artist known for her feminist and service-oriented artworks, which relate the idea of process in conceptual art to domestic and civic 'maintenance'. She has been the Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation. Her art brings to life the very essence of any urban center: waste flows, recycling, sustainability, environment, people, and ecology. Ukeles was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1939, to a rabbi. She studied history and international studies at Barnard College and later began her artistic training at the Pratt Institute in New York in 1962. Her time at the Pratt Institute came with controversy, as her artworks were deemed 'over-sexed'. While one of her teachers, Robert Richenburg, resigned in protest, she left the school shortly after. She then enrolled in art education at the University of Denver. She married in 1966. Two years later she had her first of three children. Ukeles earned a Master's degree from New York University in 1974 in Inter-related Arts.