Next up in my continuing series of artist profiles is Betye Saar. This woman's work is passionate, thoughtful and straight up beautiful. The bio below is from her gallery's website. I hope you enjoy the work as much as I do and make sure to see her work wherever it is.

Betye Saar, born in Los Angeles, received her B.A. from the University of California (1949) and pursued graduate studies at California State University at Long Beach, the University of Southern California, and California State University at Northridge.

Saar is known for her multimedia collages, box assemblages, altars, and installations consisting of found materials. She has explained, “I am intrigued with combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects, with the components of technology. It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously.” In her work, Saar voices her political, racial, religious, and gender concerns in an effort to “reach across the barriers of art and life, to bridge cultural diversities, and forge new understandings.”

In 1998, with the series Workers + Warriors, Saar returned to the image of Aunt Jemima, a theme explored in her celebrated 1972 assemblage, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. Subsequent series have sought to reveal marginalized or hidden histories – the social invisibility of black Americans in service-oriented jobs, the construction of racial hierarchies based on gradations of skin tone within black communities – and to explore the ways that objects accumulate the memories and histories of their owners.

Saar has received numerous awards of distinction including two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1974, 1984), a J. Paul Getty Fund for the Visual Arts Fellowship (1990), and a Flintridge Foundation Visual Artists Award (1998). In 1994, she and artist John Otterbridge represented the United States at the 22nd São Paulo Biennial in Brazil. In 2005, the University of Michigan Museum of Art organized the traveling exhibition Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment, which examined the use of photographic fragments in her work. A role model for generations of African American women, Saar has raised three daughters, two of whom (Alison and Lezley) are accomplished artists. Saar continues to work and live in Los Angeles.