Green Table: end view

For the Stuart Collection, Holzer has created Green Table, a large granite picnic or refectory table and benches inscribed with texts. Several temporary projects also were realized on the campus, including incorporating texts into existing electronic signs and into the Geisel Library computer system. Faux ads were inserted during television commercial breaks, and posters and a series of cast aluminum plaques were installed throughout the campus. Like many of the works in the Stuart Collection, Holzer's table and benches, sited in the Muir College quad, monumentalize an ordinary and functional set of objects. Like all tables, Holzer's work serve as an informal gathering place for students and faculty to eat, study, or play. But the various attitudes Holzer adopts in her writings - from humorous commentary to politically-charged criticism - also create a site for questioning and debate.

"Jenny wanted to make "the mother of all tables" and cover her like a tattooed lady with some of her writings from different series (Laments, Survival and Truisms) and which she thought might be of interest to students. They are available on the Stuart Collection website: http://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu. She selected a dark Canadian granite called Prairie Green, thus Green Table. The letters were incised in a process which of course, involved very careful proof-reading. We had some issues with the Office for Students with Disabilities but they were resolved without removing a bench by the argument that this was art first and a table second. It can be viewed from a wheelchair which has access on all sides and in the corners. Green Table still serves as a gathering place for classes, meals, games, study, making rubbings, and, of course, partying." Mary Beebe, Director of the Stuart Collection, 1/18/14

• 1992

• Stuart Collection (San Diego, Calif.)

• Holzer, Jenny (American conceptual artist and sculptor, born 1950)

• Beebe, Mary Livingstone (American, born 1940)

Muir College Quadrangle: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States

Canadian "Prairie Green" granite; 81 x 183 x 610 cm; with four matching benches: 47 cm (hieght)

• Installations (visual works)
• Outdoor sculpture
• Public art
• Sculpture (visual work)
• Seating furniture
• Site-specific works
• Tables (architectural elements)

• University of California, San Diego--History

• Ambiguity
• American
• Aphorisms
• Aphorisms and apothegms
• Conceptual
• Contemporary
• Ethics (concept)
• Humor
• Ideology
• Irony
• Language (verbal communication)
• Opinion (Philosophy)
• Picnic tables
• Polemics
• Politics
• Power
• Quotations (texts)
• Reflections (perceived properties)
• Semiotics
• Shade (light-related concept)
• Sunlight
• Text (layout feature)
• Tombstones (sepulchral monuments)
• Typography
• Women artists

Point: 32.878551, -117.242070

• image

• No linguistic content; Not applicable

Architecture and City Planning

Garden and Landscape

Sculpture and Installations

• UC Regents

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2022-10-27