Alison Saar
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Alison Saar is an American artist who was born in Los Angeles, California in 1956 and grew up in Laurel Canyon, California. Her parents were Betye Saar, a well-known African American artist, and Richard Saar, an art conservationist. Both parents encouraged their three daughters, all artists, to look at a wide range of art. They were given books on art and were taken to area museums. They also saw Outsider Art, such as Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles and Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley. During high school, Alison began assisting her father in his restoration work. Dealing with artifacts from different cultures―Chinese frescoes, Egyptian mummies, and Pre-Columbian and African art―taught Alison about properties of various materials, techniques, and aesthetics. She received a BA from Scripps College (Claremont, CA) in 1978, having studied African and Caribbean art with Dr. Samella Lewis. Saar’s thesis was on Southern African-American folk art. She receives an MFA from Otis Art Institute (Los Angeles, CA) in 1981.
Her work has been exhibited internationally with key exhibitions at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, L.A. Louver Gallery, and Pasadena Museum of California Art and was an artist in residence at Dartmouth College.
Her sculptures and installations explore themes of African cultural diaspora and spirituality, and her studies of Latin American, Caribbean and African art and religion have informed her work. Saar’s fascination with vernacular folk art and ability to build an oasis of beauty from cast-off objects are evident in her sculptures and paintings. Saar’s highly personal, often life-sized sculptures are marked by their emotional candor, and by contrasting materials and messages that imbue her work with a high degree of cultural subtext.
Art critic Rebecca Epstein writes, “Marrying soft with severe is the installation ‘Suckle’: 15 hanging cast bronze skillets if varying size, with an ample female breast emerging out of each pan bottom. Engaging the material via cooking, nurturing, and sex, the piece is literal but also ironic and iconic, its inherent grace stopping it miles short of cliché.”
“Saar juggles themes of personal and cultural identity as she fashions various sizes of female bodies (often her own) that are buoyant with story while solid in stance. [Her works often embody a] balance of strength and tenderness, in form and idea.”
[edit] Awards
Saar is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, an Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Artist Fellowship.
