Drawn Together, 35th Anniversary Exhibition I
Sara Garden Armstrong is a multimedia artist whose work ranges in scale from atrium sculpture to artist books. Her installation work can be both large and engulfing, requiring you to enter and become part of it. Her intimate artist books allow the viewer to have a more personal experience.
Chance and change drive her artwork as she explores and pushes the possibilities of materials used. In the finished work you see movement, repetition, transparency, layering, and mapping with organic shapes and forms, often with a focus on flow and transformation. Recent atrium commissions have focused on scientific phenomena and their interactions with the human condition.
Armstrong has exhibited nationally and internationally since the 1970s. She has had solo exhibitions at John Gibson Gallery, Dieu Donné, Souyin Yi Gallery, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York City, as well as the Birmingham Museum of Art, Maralyn Wilson Gallery, Space One Eleven, and the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions—A.I.R. Gallery and Sculpture Center, New York City; U.S. Embassy, Czech Republic, Prague; Stiftung für Konkrete Kunst, Reutlingen, Germany; Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington; and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach.
Aluminum, acrylic medium, kozo/abaca
fibers
42 x 35 x 36 in.
Her artist’s books and 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, Paris; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; and many others. Her atrium sculptures are included in collections at the Civitan International Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the United Therapeutic Corporation, Silver Spring, MD. A lavishly illustrated monograph—SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers—was published in 2020 and accompanies a traveling exhibition by the same name.
She received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama and a Master of Art Education from UAB. After living in New York City for 36 years, she returned to Birmingham, where she currently lives and works. For over 4 decades, her 21st Street Studio building has been home to over 100 artists’ studios and several galleries. Currently, it hosts the Alabama Foundation for Architecture; the cooperative art gallery Ground Floor Contemporary; and studios for fourteen artists.
Space One Eleven Involvement: Founding Member; Crossing the Line 1994; Drawings: Littoral Series 2002; CCA Teaching Artist Summer 2004; Relationships, Toni Tully 2012; Creating a Living Legacy artist 2015; Women with their Work III 2018