1 of 3
Photo by Erin Nelson.
Sara Garden Armstrong stands in her studio in downtown Birmingham in front of a wall of limited edition pieces that will be showcased inthe collectors edition of her new book, “Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers,” on Nov. 2.
2 of 3
Photo by Savannah Lowery.
A piece by Sara Garden Armstrong.
3 of 3
Photo courtesy of Hugh Hunter.
Sara Garden Armstrong installed this atrium sculpture, called “Sentient Matrix,” at The Civitan International Research Center at UAB in 2014.
Sara Garden Armstrong, a multimedia artist based in Birmingham, has enjoyed a long, successful career.
She has made bold, innovative work in a variety of forms — from atrium sculptures and interactive installations to paintings, drawings and artist’s books.
Beginning in 1976, Armstrong has presented nearly 30 solo exhibitions and taken part in about 70 group shows.
She and her work have been mentioned or written about in more than 70 articles and essays.
Armstrong also spent 35 years living as a working artist in New York City, the world’s visual art capital.
To bring together a compelling picture of this long career, Armstrong recently published a book, “Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers.”
The monograph features essays and lavish photography that reveals the connections in Armstrong’s large body of work.
The release of “Threads and Layers” coincides with a traveling exhibition of the same name.
The book looks back over four decades and “looks at the threads of connection in that work,” Armstrong told Iron City Ink.
“It discusses my artistic processes and looks at the studio spaces I’ve called home throughout my life as an artist,” she said.
Armstrong found that she learned a lot about her own work in the process of going through all of her old images and documentation.
“It was tremendously enlightening,” she said.
A Birmingham native, Armstrong did not find her way to an art career right away.
She first studied elementary education ,then science.
In her 20s, she began taking art classes at the Birmingham Museum of Art and found her passion.
Armstrong earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alabama in 1977, earned a master’s degree in education at UAB the same year and taught art classes at UAB from 1978-80.
From the moment Armstrong chose to pursue art, “it was a very straight line,” she said. “I was sort of obsessed with it, and I moved forward.”
New York seemed like the next logical step for Armstrong. She made the decision to move there while teaching at UAB and spending a semester in the Big Apple.
“I loved it from the moment I went up there,” said Armstrong, who quit her job at UAB to pursue her dream.
She lived in New York until about 2017 but had made the decision by about 2015 to move back to Birmingham.
After all, she already owned a large building on Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard where she co-founded Ground Floor Contemporary gallery on the first floor.
“I thought, ‘I have a really good place in Birmingham … It won’t cost as much money. I’ll have more time to do art,’” Armstrong said.
A couple of events came together to create the opportunity for the artist to plan the new exhibitions and the book.
She received a Creating a Living Legac y(CALL) grant from Space One Eleven gallery downtown, funded by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, to help organize and archive her work.
She had someone coming into her studio for about a year. “Part of that was in New York, and part was here,” she said.
A curator named Paul Barrett also made an important visit to Armstrong’s studio in Birmingham.
“He’s an old friend, and he was doing a studio visit, and when he saw a lot of work he didn’t know, he thought this could be a really great traveling show,” Armstrong said.
The title, “Threads and Layers,” came up then, as did the possibility of writing a book.
“I had never really even thought about it,” she said.
Armstrong began working on the book project in December 2018 and January 2019.
She had a lot to learn about how to publish “a book book, not an artist’s book,” she said, referring to the various technical and financial parameters or limitations involved.
“It has been like an art piece that has just sort of taken over what I have been doing,” Armstrong said. “It is a great experience, but I had no idea what I was getting into or how much time it would take.”
“But I do like challenges,” she added.
She also said that she’s had a great team of people in Birmingham and elsewhere helping her bring the book to fruition.
Being back in Birmingham was a key factor in being able to produce “Threads and Layers,” Armstrong said.
“I don’t think this book would have happened in New York,” she said, noting that being in her own building afforded her lots of space.
She was also able to see early work that had been packed away for years, since before she moved to New York in about 1980.
Being in Birmingham meant “pulling out work I had not seen in 30 or 40 years or thought about,” she said.
Seeing and “juxtaposing” work from, say 1978 and 2019 “was really interesting to me,” Armstrong said.
She also had to locate additional materials needed by some of the essayists who contributed to the book.
“Many of them were very familiar with my work, but I had to provide a lot more images and a little more history,” she said. “You don’t take time to do that. We are always so engrossed in the moment.”
It was worth all the effort for the artist, with not only a book but the traveling exhibition, which was curated by Barrett and is now on tour.
“Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers” was shown in two galleries on the campus of the University of Alabama in August and September.
It is currently on display at the Wiregrass Museum in Dothan until Dec. 31.
The show will continue to tour in 2021and 2022, with some dates and locations not finalized, Armstrong said.
In November, she also took part in a book signing and fundraiser for the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, located on Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard South downtown.
The artist, despite all this talk about the past, is not wallowing in the past.
The process of doing the book “has given me a great deal of insight and a sort of strength of future of moving forward with more work,” Armstrong said. “So instead of being dead-ended it is much more opening.”
For more information about Armstrong, her book and her installations, go to saragardenarmstrong.net.
