Poster for "Alison Saar: STILL"

              Otis College of Art and Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90045
BEN MALTZ GALLERY
Tue-Sat 10am-5pm; Th 10am-7pm
Closed Sun, Mon, Sept. 3
(310) 665-6905
galleryinfo@otis.edu
www.otis.edu/benmaltzgallery
Free Admission and Parking
Non-Profit Org.
US Postage
Paid
Los Angeles, CA
Permit No. 427
Public Reception
Saturday, September 15, 4pm-6pm, Free
Meet Alison Saar and enjoy music by Sunny War
Otis Alumni Gallery &
Studio Bus Tour
Saturday, September 22, 10am-4pm, $25*
Otis Alumna Alison Saar tours her exhibition STILL... in the Ben
Maltz Gallery followed by lunch and a bus tour to local Otis alumni
studios and galleries. (Reg # 35449, $25 Non-credit)
Conversation
Sunday, November 4, 2pm, Free with reservation*
Alison Saar in conversation with curator/writer Sarah Lewis about
about art, race, and gender.
(Reg # 35450, Free non-credit)
Scholar, writer, and curator Sarah Lewis is currently finishing her
book, RISE, a book that draws on her work in the arts and expanding
into sports, business, psychology, sociology, and science. Selected for
Oprah’s 2010 “Power List,” and included as a member of President
Obama’s Arts Policy Committee, her writing has been published widely.
Her Yale dissertation on Frederick Douglass, The Circassian Beauties,
and American Racial Formation is now under contract with Harvard
University Press (2014). She has been an active curator, holding
positions at both the Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art
and was the Co-Curator of the 2010 SITE Santa Fe Biennial. She
is currently curating the art for the Barclays Center while finishing
her manuscripts. Sarah sits on the boards of the Harvard University
Alumni Association, The CUNY Graduate Center, The Andy
Warhol for the Visual Arts, The Brearley School, and is on the Art
Advisory committee of Madison Square Park. She received her B.A.
from Harvard University, magna cum laude, an M.Phil from Oxford
University with Distinction as a British Marshall Scholar, and will
receive her PhD from Yale University in 2012. She is on faculty at Yale
University, School of Art in the MFA program.
*Reservations The bus tour and conversation are organized in
partnership with Otis Continuing Education. Reservations for these
two programs are required. To register or for more information, contact
otisce@otis.edu or (310) 665-6850, or visit www.otis.edu/ce.
Poetry Reading & Closing Reception
Saturday, November 17, 3pm-5pm, Free
Poetry reading by Harryette Mullen followed by a reception
for Alison Saar.
Harryette Mullen is the author of several poetry collections, including
Recyclopedia, Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge, winner of a
PEN Beyond Margins Award, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, a finalist for
a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los
Angeles Times Book Prize. Her poems have been translated into Spanish,
Portuguese, French, Italian, Polish, German, Swedish, Danish, Turkish,
and Bulgarian. She teaches American poetry, African American
literature, and creative writing at UCLA. A collection of her essays and
interviews, The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed to
Be, is due from University of Alabama Press in 2012. Her Tanka Diary is
forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2013.
THANK YOU!
This project is funded in part by the Contemporary
Collectors – Orange County. Special thanks to the
following for logistical and programmatic support:
Decker Studios, LA Louver, John David O’Brien, Otis
Continuing Education and Alumni Relations.
The Ben Maltz Gallery continues its focus of
presenting and documenting new work by artists
in the region with the solo exhibition, STILL...
by Otis alumna Alison Saar (MFA ’81). Being
informed by artistic traditions from the Americas
to Africa and beyond and from a mixed racial
upbringing, Saar fuses her paradoxical responses
to the black and white delineations of political and
social forces into a powerful visual and kinesthetic
tension. She uses the history and associations of
her materials, everyday experience, African art and
ritual, Greek mythology, and the stark sculptural
tradition of German Expressionism to infuse the
work with a primal intensity that challenges cultural
and historic references and stereotypes. STILL...
gathers together for the first time four never-exhibited
works made during a residency at Pilchuck
Glass School in Seattle with six new bronze and
mixed-media sculptures.
Saar is a mature and significant artist; a sculptor
who has already achieved broad recognition for
her studio and public art throughout the country.
Her work is held in many collections including the
Museum of Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, and Metropolitan Museum of
Art; and she has major public art works in Los
Angeles, New York, and Chicago. She has also
received numerous prestigious awards including a
Guggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman,
and National Endowment for the Arts.
Events
For a listing of more
Otis events visit
www.otis.edu/calendar
TourS
To schedule a group tour
of the exhibition for
students, businesses, or
organizations please email
galleryinfo@otis.edu
Poster Image: 50 Proof, 2012 (detail)
Glass, copper, rubber, steel, soap, cotton textiles, enamel basin and water
63, 20 x 28 inches, Photo: Jeff McLane
Above Right: Mammy Machine, 2012 (detail)
Glass rubber, found chain and washtub and water
75 x 36 x 24 1/2 inches, Photo: Jeff McLane
Above Left: Fall, 2011 (detail)
Cast bronze
159 x 42 x 39 inches, Photo: James Ewing
All images courtesy of LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA
She forcefully investigates elements of
marginalization and discrimination in society to
present poetic responses through a process of self-scrutiny
and introspection as to how these historical
burdens can be transformed and how symbolic
atonement and even some measure of redemption
can be imagined. Her work is especially relevant
for this moment as it mirrors an entirely American
process of spiritual and political bifurcation and the
evolution of historical recovery. As Lowry Stokes
Sims, Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design,
writes in her essay for Feallan and Fallow, “Alison
Saar’s library of references is as varied and rich as
her own heritage. Her special gift lies in her ability
to translate the personal and the culturally specific in
such a way that it embodies concerns that not only
transcend race but also gender.”
—Meg Linton
Director of Galleries and Exhibitions
Otis College of Art and Design
Public Programs
your visit
August 18 – November 17, 2012
Alison Sar
August 18 – November 17, 2012
Alison Sar
Forthcoming Catalog
The forthcoming catalog, Alison Saar: STILL... (October, 2012),
features an introduction by Meg Linton, Curator of the Exhibition; an
essay by Dr. Barbara Thompson, Phyllis Wattis Curator of the Arts of
Africa and the Americas at the Cantor Art Center, Stanford University;
poetry by Harryette Mullen, and full color reproductions of the work
and installation.