Betye Saar
Betye Saar (1926 - ) was born and raised in Los Angeles. During visits to her grandmother, she saw Simon Rodia's Watts Towers being built, which had a profound impact on her use of discarded items in her art work. Saar received her B.A. from UCLA, and did graduate work at the University of Southern California and the California State Universities at Long Beach and Northridge. Saar completed public art installations at the Newark train station in Newark, New Jersey, and at a Metrorail station in Miami, Florida. Her work has been exhibited extensively in New York and Los Angeles, including solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and at the Whitney Museum in New York City. In addition to creating individual pieces, Saar has collaborated in recent years with her daughter Alison.
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (1940 - ) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Barnard College and received her M.F.A. from Yale. De Bretteville taught at the University of California, Berkeley, California Institute for the Arts and chaired the Department of Communication and Illustration at the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design. Currently, she chairs the Design Department at Yale University. Her other public art installation in Los Angeles is "Omoide no Shotokyo" ("Remember Little Tokyo") is a 1000' long transformation of the sidewalk in the Little Tokyo Historic District.
The text has been provided courtesy of Michael Several, Los Angeles, December 1999.
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