Synopses & Reviews
The first extended monograph on Saar, featuring older and more recent works, gorgeously bound in cloth with embossed details.
This publication accompanies an exhibition co-organized by the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, California and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California. Alongside photographic reproductions of Los Angeles artist Alison Saar’s work, the clothbound catalog contains an interview between Saar and the exhibit’s co-curator, never-before-published photographs from the artist’s childhood and poetry by Camille Dungy, Harryette Mullen and Evie Shockley.
Introduction by Rebecca McGrew, conversation with Alison Saar and Irene Tsatsos, artist timeline authored by Alison Saar. Design by Kimberly Varella of Content Object, Los Angeles.
About the Author
Alison Saar studied studio art and art history at Scripps College in Claremont, California, receiving a BA in art history in 1978. In 1981 she earned her MFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. In 1983, Saar became an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, incorporating found objects from the city environment. Saar completed another residency in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1985, which augmented her urban style with Southwest Native American and Mexican influences.
Saar’s style encompasses a multitude of personal, artistic, and cultural references that reflect the plurality of her own experiences. Her sculptures, installations, and prints incorporate found objects including rough-hewn wood, old tin ceiling panels, nails, shards of pottery, glass, and urban detritus. The resulting figures and objects become powerful totems exploring issues of gender, race, heritage, and history. Saar’s art is included in museums and private collections across the U.S.