LA Sky with Spinning Hearts

LA Sky with Spinning Hearts

Betye Saar regards the sky as an important aspect of nature and expresses its mystical aspects through a careful manipulation of form. Her fantastical rendition of the sky in LA–Saar’s place of birth–cannot be confined to traditional rectangular and square frames. The print itself bends and contorts to capture all its expansiveness. Saar stitched pieces of heavy paper together to create its irregular shape. A shooting star tugs at the edges, and the leaves of a palm tree move beyond the frame. A border dotted with white, green, red, and blue, features white moons at its top edge, recalling mysticism and ritual associated with lunar cycles. The otherworldliness, magic, and dizzying love in the sky, washed in multiple shades of blue, promotes a sense of home and longing.

Betye Saar

1989

Offset printing, silkscreen, stitching

David C. Driskell Center Permanent Collection,
Gift from Jean and Robert E. Steele Collection