The University of Alabama Department of Art and Art History proudly presents Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers, August 7 – September 25, 2020, in The University of Alabama Gallery and The Arts Council Gallery of the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center. While Tuscaloosa and The University of Alabama practice safe distancing, the gallery’s exhibition will be open by appointment, Monday-Friday 9 am – 4 pm. We are open Monday-Friday from 1pm-3pm for walk-in visitors. Please see the link below schedule a time to visit!
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Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers surveys works by Alabama native and UA alumna, Sara Garden Armstrong, representing an artistic practice in Alabama and New York spanning six decades. The exhibition displays works varying in media from handmade artist books to painting to sculpture and installation, which interpret life cycles and metamorphosis using movement, color, sound, texture and light. This exhibition includes work from 1978 to 2020, with works never exhibited before and pieces that have never been presented together.
The exhibition is guest-curated by Paul Barrett, who recently curated For the Record: The Art of Al Sella at the UA Gallery and It’s Like That: Selections from the Collection of Rebecca and Jack Drake at the Paul R. Jones Museum. Barrett represented Armstrong’s artist books at the art gallery AGNES in the 1990s, including the limited-edition mini environment she created for Airplayers, a work in the collections of the Pompidou Centre, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and is featured in this exhibition.
Armstrong has exhibited nationally and internationally since the 1970s. She has had solo exhibitions at John Gibson Gallery, Dieu Donné Gallery, Souyun Yi Gallery and the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, N.Y.; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Maralyn Wilson Gallery, Space One Eleven, and the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, AL. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including SculptureCenter and A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY; Susan Hensel Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; U.S. Embassy, Czech Republic, Prague; Stiftung für Konkrete Kunst, Reutlingen, Germany; Bellevue Art Museum, WA; Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA.
Her artist books, installations and other artworks are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Time, Inc., New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Bibliothèque Nationale and Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; and others. Her atrium sculptures are included in such corporate collections as United Therapeutic Corporation, Silver Spring, MD. Armstrong now lives and works in Birmingham, where she founded the cooperative art gallery, Ground Floor Contemporary. Her website is http://saragardenarmstrong.com/.
The exhibition precedes a monograph of Armstrong’s work that will be published in the fall of 2020.
Photo courtesy of Paul Barrett.