She turns 100 in three months. Shes still making. [UtYH2F6hBKK]
She turns 100 in three months. She's still making. Betye Saar. Born in Los Angeles, 1926. As a child, she used to visit her grandmother in Watts and watch Simon Rodia building the Watts Towers, a man turning junk into a monument. That image stayed with her. That anything discarded could become something sacred. She's been doing the same thing for over sixty years. Assemblage, found objects, family heirlooms, flea market relics, things other people threw away. She puts them together and they become something that holds more weight than the sum of their parts. This is "Souvenir of Friendship." 1977. Mixed media. It hangs in the Eileen Harris Norton Collection, a collection Norton built the way Saar builds her art: through relationships, not transactions. And this piece is named for exactly that. Angela Davis traced the start of the Black women's movement to Saar's "Liberation of Aunt Jemima." That was 1972. Saar took a racist caricature from a flea market and turned it into a symbol of resistance. A woman who takes what the world discards and gives it back as something powerful. She still lives in the same house in Laurel Canyon. Same studio. Since 1962. Frank Zappa was her neighbour. The Hammer Museum just honoured her at their annual gala. The New York Historical Society opens a show for her 100th birthday this month. Roberts Projects opens another in May. Ninety-nine years old. Same house. Same practice. Some artists chase relevance. Betye Saar just kept making, and relevance came to find her. — Who is someone in your life who just kept going? #betyesaar #hauserwirth #eileenharrisnorton #contemporaryart #chosenbyanna