how things get done – Betye Saar

Record for Hattie, Betye Saar, 1975
Record for Hattie, Betye Saar, 1975, mixed media 2 x 14 x 13.5 inches

I’d like to work slow and sure, and it takes a long time, it takes a couple years to get an exhibition together. So, they don’t leave without me really considering that it’s done. And, also because I’ve been doing it for forty years or so, it’s like okay, you know. The pieces that are important to me are personal pieces, pieces that are about my family. Like the one that’s called Legacy about my grandchildren, I don’t particularly want to sell that, but I don’t mind sharing it with people, I don’t mind having it in an exhibition.

When my great aunt passed, my mother’s father’s sister, she left A whole truck full of things, you know, scarves and handkerchiefs and gloves and boxes and jewelry, and that was like in 1975, and I just started a whole new series of work about her, The Aunt Hattie Series, collages and boxes and things like that. So, some of them I keep, and some of them I don’t.