Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR)

 Welcome to  

 

SITAR is about ANYTHING art. Your art, someone else's art, writing, photography, the art of cooking, the art of sewing and textiles. Sharing historical art, street art, a story about art. Do you have a question or need help with art? Write a blog post and link it up here. We will all try to help with it. My only rule is that if someone asks for critique it must be done with generosity and consideration. This is a place of learning, encouragement and inspiration. 

 

Before I get started yesterday Mr. M. and I celebrated 46 years together. 

Wow! That went by so fast.  

  

Now for SITAR. 

 

Today I want to introduce Marjorie Strider. Pop Artist

 

When we think about Pop Art the names that come to mind are Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein. Women Pop Artists remained behind the scenes,  for one single reason.  The art scene of the time promoted the myth of the male "artist-as-genius," sidelining women into the periphery of galleries and museums. Art critics often trivialized female perspectives. As art historian Lucy Lippard noted, male artist making work about the kitchen or household items was seen as pioneering Pop Art. Where as women doing similar art was dismissed as "cute" or domestic.

 

Marjorie Strider was born in Guthrie, OK. January 26, 1931 

Marjorie knew at a young age exactly what she wanted to do and that was to make art. Later in her life in an interview she stated. 

"I never wanted to be anything but an artist." 

Girl with the radish 

 

She pursued her passion formally by studying art at Oklahoma State University and the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree. After college Marjorie did moved to Knasas City and spent two years designing creative commercial window displays for the Robinson Shoe Company. She said this experience helped her hone her understanding of spatial design and three-dimensional forms.

Tierra del Fuego, 1982 Mixed media sculpture with aluminum, acrylic, glitter and sequins.

216x140cm   Galerie Gmurzynska 

 

As Marjorie began creating large instillations she moved to using  urethane foam.

This medium allowed her to cast much lighter, bulbous, and free-flowing organic shapes—such as oozing liquids or exaggerated anatomical features—that could protrude multiple feet out from the wall.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition "Marjorie Strider: Tower Project" at the Clocktower

February 26 - March 13, 1976. MoMA PS1 Archives, I.A.50. The Museum of
Modern Art Archives, New York. INPS1.46.2. Photograph by Jonathan Dent.
 

In 1957, she moved to New York City. By the early 1960s, she grew incredibly bored with traditional, flat canvas painting. To break the monotony, she began experimentations she called "build-outs" attaching wood, cardboard, and Styrofoam to her paintings so the imagery literally burst out into the room. This unique hybrid of painting and sculpture caught the attention of the mainstream art world and launched her into the legendary 1960s Pop Art scene.

 

 

Marjorie  applied her artistic concepts to everyday consumer goods and nature. She crafted oversized pieces, like structural radishes and asparagus stalks rising off the dark backgrounds. 

Venetian blinds buckled and warped by flowing blue matter and Coca Cola cans pouring out thick solid waves of pink foam. Through these build-outs, she humorously attacked the male-dominated status quo of Pop Art. She actively changed how viewers interacted with space and form.  

In 1964, Pace Gallery, in New York, set up and exhibit with Marjorie alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The landmark exhibition titled, "The First International Girlie Show" opened in January. The group show was highly coordinated, tongue-in-cheek artistic statement that brought together 10 prominent Pop artists to explore the theme of the American pin up girl. 

 

Instead of being overshadowed, Strider actually became the standout star of the show.

Strider's comically provocative build-out painting, Girl with Radish, was chosen by the gallery as the official banner and marketing image for the entire exhibition. 
While the male artists were painting pin-ups from a position of voyeurism, Strider used her 3D "build-outs" to push the women's physical features into the viewer's space—satirizing the sexual objectification of women and aggressively confronting the male gaze. 

The show was an immense critical and media success, heavily covered by television and newspapers. It solidified Pace Gallery's presence in New York and launched Strider's career, leading directly to two subsequent solo exhibitions for her at the gallery. 

 

Marjorie had a highly successful and prolific 50 year career, though its trajectory followed a path common to many pioneering female artist of her generation.  

 Marjorie Strider died on August 27, 2014 at the age of 83.  

I hope you enjoyed meeting Marjorie.

 

That's it for now.

 

I will be joining Gillena  

It's time to show me your art. 

Nicole 

 

SITAR

 Welcome to

SITAR is about ANYTHING art. Your art, someone else's art, writing, photography, the art of cooking, the art of sewing and textiles. Sharing historical art, street art, a story about art. Do you have a question or need help with art? Write a blog post and link it up here. We will all try to help with it. My only rule is that if someone asks for critique it must be done with generosity and consideration. 

This is a place of learning, encouragement and inspiration.

 

I have always found fashion to be an art form. But how did it start. Here is a video that shows just a bit of how things changed. 

 

 

 

It wasn't until 1890 that modern fashion shifted the clothing industry. The rise of the sewing machine is what made this possible, changing from laborious handmade clothes to crafted luxury designs. Before that Mothers and daughters spent a massive portion of their daily lives sewing. Girls were taught precise stitching (like the back stitch and running stitch) from early childhood. To save time, home-sewn clothes used simple, geometric patterns (like rectangles and squares for shifts and shirts) that required less cutting and fitting. Because fabric was so expensive, clothes were constantly mended, patched, resized for younger children, and eventually turned into rags or quilts. People owned very few outfits.

To understand the impact of the 1850s transition: a skilled hand-sewer took about 14 hours to make a man's shirt by hand. With the early sewing machine, that time dropped to 1 hour and 16 minutes. 

Now there are so many directions I can go with this post. From the early "slop" shops located near ports for sailors who didn't have anyone to sew for them, to the second hand trade. Or the sweat shops where women form different countries slaved to make clothes.  However, I don't want to get into all of that. I just want to show how clothes have changed over the decades. 

Here is another video.

 

                           

  

 

 I just thought these were fun to watch.

I will be joining Gillena 

 

Nicole

 

Sunday in the Art Room SITAR

 Welcome to 

SITAR is about ANYTHING art. Your art, someone else's art, writing, photography, the art of cooking, the art of sewing and textiles. Sharing historical art, street art, a story about art. Do you have a question or need help with art? Write a blog post and link it up here. We will all try to help with it. My only rule is that if someone asks for critique it must be done with generosity and consideration. 

This is a place of learning, encouragement and inspiration.

 

I'm happy to introduce to you,

Betye Irene Saar.

July 30, 1926 – July 26, 2026 

Betye Saar was an American artist know for her work in the medium of assemblage. She was a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Betye was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the  1970s, which engaged myths and stereotypes about race and femininity. Her work is considered highly political, as she challenged negative ideas about African Americans throughout her career. Bety is best know for her artwork that critiques anti-Black racism in the United States. 

Betye Saar was born Betye Irene Brown on July 30, 1926, to Jefferson Maze Brown and Beatrice Lillian Parson in Los Angeles, California. Both parents attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where they met. Betye spent her early years in Los Angeles.  After her father's death in 1931, Betye and her mother, brother, and sister moved in with her paternal grandmother, Irene Hannah Maze, in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. The family then moved to Pasadena, California, to live with Saar's maternal great-aunt Hatte Parson Keys and her husband Robert E. Keys 

She attended college and during that time met and married  Richard Saar and gave birth to 3 daughters. 

Betye started her adult life as a social worker, and then later pursued her passion for art. She began her graduate education in 1958, originally working towards a career in teaching design. However, a printmaking class she took as an elective changed the direction of her artistic interests. She described printmaking as her "segue from design into fine arts" 

 The  late 1950s-1960s began her artistic career primarily focused on design and printmaking. She created colors etchings, intaglio prints and drawings that incorporated stamps and stencils. Her early themes leaned heavily towards family, cosmology and mysticism. Her early prints were filled with windows, moons, hands, stars, eyes, astrological signs, and shadowy figures. They suggested that visible reality was only one layer of experience.

Betye's collected racist imagery and continued throughout her career. She was inspired to create assemblages by a 1967 exhibition by found object sculptor, Joseph Cornell. She was also greatly influenced by Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, which she witnessed being built in her childhood. Betye said that she was "fascinated by the materials that Simon Rodia used, the broken dishes, sea shells, rusty tools, even corn cobs—all pressed into cement to create spires. To me, they were magical."

Assemblage Art

 

The Grand Dame of Assemblage art. 

 Printmaking had allowed her to build symbolic worlds on paper. Assemblage allowed her to place history itself inside a frame.

She began searching flea markets, swap meets, antique shops and secondhand stores. Her collections of everything from clocks, bottles, beads, fabric, washboards, dolls, photos, boxes, bones and household objects held the spirit of those no longer remembered. She understood that objects absorb meaning from the people and systems around them. Some carried intimacy, others carried violence.  Among the objects found in American markets and kitchens were caricatures of Black poeple produced during slavery's long aftermath. Smiling mammies, grinning servants, exaggerated dolls, advertisements, postcards and household containers had been created to make racial hierarchy look comforting, humorous or harmless. 

 They were not harmless. They reduced Black men and women to obedient figures whose exaggerated smiles concealed the realities of forced labor, segregation, economic exploitation and  humiliation.

 By the late 1960's the Civil Rights Movement had exposed the violence required to maintain racial inequality. Black artists were demanding control over Black representation. The Black Arts Movement encouraged art that did not seek permission for white institutions before speaking directly to Black History, identity, anger and possibility. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, many artists including Betye became more politically aware. With 3 children she couldn't always march, and publicly demonstrate so she made art into her form of protest. 

In 1972, the Rainbow Sign, a Black   cultural center in Berkeley, invited artists to participate in an exhibition     about Black heroes. Betye could  have chosen any recognizable leader.    Instead, she decided to create a         Black heroine from an image     designed to deny Black women  dignity. She chose Aunt Jemima. 

The reaction to Betye Saar’s 1972 artwork, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, was explosive and deeply transformative. By taking a demeaning, smiling Jim Crow caricature and arming her with a rifle and a grenade, Betye "touched a national nerve" and created a definitive icon for both the Black Power and feminist movements.

Betye Saar continued to create art until the day she passed.  

 

 

Everything I have read about Betye, tells me she was a fearless woman, in a time of fear, and an artist that shows the world a different direction. She was also very eloquent. 

Hope you learned something new today on SITAR

Nicole 

 

I will be joining Gillena
 

Studio Museum in Harlem 

Artsy.net 

Roberts Projects  

 

Sunday in the art room

 Welcome to 

SITAR is about ANYTHING art. Your art, someone else's art, writing, photography, the art of cooking, the art of sewing and textiles. Sharing historical art, street art, a story about art. Do you have a question or need help with art? Write a blog post and link it up here. We will all try to help with it. My only rule is that if someone asks for critique it must be done with generosity and consideration. 

This is a place of learning, encouragement and inspiration.

 

I love art dolls. Some of you may remember my spirit dolls.

 

 

Over my years I have made other types of dolls and always am impressed with dolls I see at shops or on line. 

 

Artist Francine Haskins 

Art Dolls by AKVARELA

Ankie: the dollmaker

 

The doll world is massive and the creations are never ending. 

You know I had to show you some creepy dolls. 

These are from Pintrest.

 

Did you know, The first recorded dolls date back more than 4,000 years ago to ancient civilizations like Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The oldest known examples are wooden "paddle dolls" found in ancient Egyptian tombs from around 2000 BC, made with clay or bead hair.

 

The oldest known complete dolls in history are  Egyptian Paddle dolls, carved from wood and dating back to around 2000 BCE (the Middle Kingdom period). Found buried in ancient tombs, these flat, paddle-shaped figures feature bead or clay-thread hair and geometric body patterns.  

Dolls exist in every human culture. They serve as sacred ritual objects, beloved toys, and powerful historical records that reveal how people lived and what they valued across time.

  

 If you are interested in dolls just google it.

 

 Nicole

 

I'm joining Gillena for