Press | Book Reviews
December 2023
October 9, 2023
“Threads and Layers goes out of its way to allow the reader to be a part of an extraordinary career.”
A Review of SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers
By Ray Wetzel, Alabama Writer’s Forum
“Artist, Sara Garden Armstrong’s work is well within the tradition of contemporary art, but there is an accessibility to the work so that if viewers trust their instincts they will be rewarded with a truly special experience.”
July 6, 2023
“The result is an ominous, ethereal effect that creates feelings of fright and uncertainty in the viewer, a work tied to but transcending its time.”
A Review of SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers
BookLife Reviews, Editors Pick
“This career retrospective of the work of Sara Garden Armstrong follows the Alabama-born artist through her use of different mediums including sculpture, charcoal, watercolors, and sound constructions, as well as her practical struggle to maintain a steady studio amid the rapid gentrification of Manhattan in the 1980s, especially one that could contain her often large and intricate sculptures.”
October 7, 2022
Congratulations on your gorgeous and comprehensive monograph, SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers that generously shares your oeuvre, life story, and courageous struggle to live the life of an artist. So much attention has been given to this thoughtful book incorporating text with images from historical archives. The use of QR codes linking to videos enhances the experience.
By Arezoo Moseni, MA, MFA, MLIS
Senior Art Librarian
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library
The Art Collection
The New York Public Library
“This book establishes the authority of Sara Armstrong as a gifted artist, a visionary imbued with effusive imagination.”
A Review of SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers
The Book Commentary
“Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers presents the work of the artist in her multiple forms of expression, from paintings and drawings to stunning photography, Work that is filled with rich visuals and artistry texture is presented in this collection, and through this presentation, readers get a deeper appreciation of both the artist and her work and the connections between her different forms of art.”
September 28, 2022
“Asking for More”
An Abstract Art and Book Review of SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers
By John Haber, New York City
“When Sara Garden Armstrong sent me a retrospective volume of her work, she meant it as a thank you and an invitation. It felt, though, like a massive correction. From the very start in the 1970s, she had been working in three dimensions, as a student in Alabama and in installations tailored to the Birmingham Museum. One hardly knows whether to call them conceptual art, architecture, or sculpture. Some take the modular form of Minimalism, with thick, flat pillars in bright red. Work ever since all but leaps off the floor.
Thin wood risers might outline the hull of a ship or the curves of the human body—a pun that appears more recently in the African American art of Kerry James Marshall, Roy DeCarava, and Hugh Hayden. Other open frames look like antenna towers, and Armstrong engages the space with sound as well. These works include speakers, and titles riff on space, structure, and sound. The red steles respond to their environment physically, too, by bending toward the viewer. Lighting plays its part as well, picking out the highlights and casting their shadows. They have one surrounded.”
March 18, 2022
“A gloriously illustrated retrospective on a groundbreaking multimedia art career”
“Book Review: SARA GARDEN ARMSTRONG: Threads and Layers”
Reviewed by Tucker Lieberman
“The generous number of color illustrations are a joy of this art book. Where the original artwork was three-dimensional, the photographs themselves were taken artistically with careful attention to lighting and space. The book is not only an index of Armstrong’s art but a walkthrough of the workspaces in which she created it and the museums in which she exhibited it.”
January 15, 2021
