Alison Saar
Skillet, 2001, iron skillet & acrylic paint, 16.5 x 12 x 2.5 inches

The interview was conducted by Ilana Stanger of TheArtBiz.com.

You recently shifted from teaching on the graduate level to teaching elementary school. Why was that?

I have two young children, and when I worked on the college level I had conflicts with time scheduling. With elementary school, I’m teaching at the same time my kids are in school. So there’s a practical reason for it. I also felt that a lot of graduate students were very jaded. They weren’t really open to experiencing art. I often found myself questioning why they were at school since they seemed to feel they knew everything. I got frustrated by them, and I decided it’d be really nice to teach young children who still love art for the sake of it.

What do you try to teach the elementary school students?

The school’s curriculum is very integrated, and so my projects reflect what the classroom studies. I study, and teach, about art in different cultures--especially what art means to different cultures. I try to teach them that art is not a precious product, and that sometimes it’s a process. I try to open their eyes to the many types of art out there: self-taught artists and art from Africa and China, as well as all the impressionist stuff. That’s not my favorite cup of tea--not that I don’t like impressionist art, but you hold up a Van Gogh and everyone knows it’s a Van Gogh. It’s less exciting to teach.

You’ve received numerous grants and residencies, from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Washington Project for the Arts among others. How did you get your first grant?

That’s when grants were still available. I got the NEA twice. Unfortunately, the field has narrowed somewhat; even in terms of public art grants in cities it’s narrowed. I would like to say that there is some special way to win grants, but there isn’t--I just applied for them. However, I’ve also been on the other side as a panelist on grant committees. It’s really, really important to have the work photographed professionally. It’s very difficult to interpret dark, out of focus slides, and it also shows confidence in the work because the artist was willing to invest in it. Also, take the time to think about what the work is. Have a clear sense of what’s it about that you can express in writing.

You use so many materials in your work--wood, paint, dirt, roots, glue, tin, wax, found objects. What brings you to each new material?

I’ve always really experienced life through touch. When I was growing up we lived near all these burnt down houses, since the neighborhood was basically burnt down in the 1950s. Every time it rained all these strange objects would come washing up into the streets. To me it was really interesting to look at these objects that had history--they were really artifacts. I think of the materials I work with as artifacts: they have spirit and wisdom. Hence using ceiling tin and used linoleum. It was also practical: as an art student I didn’t have the money to spend $75 on supplies and these materials were available in New York City. But I was also drawn to the idea that ceiling-tin and old linoleum had witnessed 75-100 years of the theatre of human life. That gave my sculptures wisdom and knowledge. When I work with skillets they’re used skillets--they cooked bacon and all that stuff and then were discarded. Those pieces in particular are really talking about the invisibility of the domestic.

Are there materials you think of as more your own than others?

I’m comfortable with them all, and they all seem like mine. But now that I’m living in L.A. tin and linoleum aren’t as accessible. I just had to rethink a piece because I can’t get enough tin.

Your sculpture “Snake Charmer” was loaned to the White House [from the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden] during the Clinton presidency. How did it feel to have one of your works there?

It was really strange. Unfortunately, I never got to get out there. It was part of a one-year exhibition divided into four sections, so it was up for ¼ of a year. They invited four curators from four different regions of the US to select work, and Townsend Wolfe, a curator from Little Rock, Arkansas [Arkansas Arts Center] chose mine. All the work was sculpture for the Jackie Onassis Sculpture garden, though mine was an indoor piece installed in a passageway next to the garden. It was very cool. They made a little booklet and I was invited to come out for tea, but I couldn’t afford to. But my aunt visited, and she took a picture for me.

You’ve created work for a few public commissions--among them the 125th Street Metro North train station in New York City. How is the process for making a commissioned work different than your regular working process?

I haven’t done a lot, because they’re extremely difficult. I did the train station and I did, along with my mother, a garden for a public school in Queens. I have a very large piece of sculpture in Chicago right now and just this year I decided to do another one for a space in Sacramento. Public commissions sound great at the beginning because it seems like a massive sum of money, but there are so many demands: the work has to be weatherproof and secure, you need to get insurance...the money gets eaten away and sometimes the piece is really compromised to meet the requirements. I feel fortunate that my MTA piece, “Hear the Lone Whistle Moan,” is still really true to my original idea and to my work. But I’ve had bad experiences too. I was supposed to do something with the public schools and I went through six months of negotiations and hired lawyers to draw up contracts, and in the end they wanted the artist to be liable for the safety of the piece which meant if a kid hurt themselves I’d be responsible. So I ended up losing $500 on that commission. There are just a lot of things that really complicate commissions. Unless you can find a project you feel really passionate it can be extremely problematic.

What is your work process like? How do you maintain such a high rate of productivity?

I haven’t stepped inside my studio since September. It’s on and off. Especially now that I’m teaching I don’t have any time, so this summer will be the time to get a lot of work done. A few months before installing a show I’ll be working day and night, and then there’s total burn out. After a little while I begin investigating new materials, and then producing again. It’s cyclical. When I lived in New York I had a studio away from home and I’d get up in the morning, pack lunch, and go to the studio. I don’t have that luxury now. My schedule is really tied up with my family. In New York I had a sitter watching my kids and there was public transportation, but here you have to drive everyone everywhere.

What advice would you give to emerging artists?

You know, I find with a lot of emerging artists their first questions to me are about careers and galleries. The truth is, they really need to think about why they’re making art. They need to focus on the art-making process and really push themselves to refine their art. After that all the rest falls into place. In my experience every time I tried to be really pushy about my art it just wasn’t ready, or people didn’t like pushy artists. When I really focused on the art, then eventually people got interested. There’s really no special trick to getting into galleries; the real trick is just to make really good art. Don’t focus on trends but on your own work. Hopefully people will like it, but even if they don’t, it’s your own.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.