Create Birmingham Interview, Sara Garden Armstrong

Create Birmingham

“Put yourself in positions where you feel lost. It gives you incredible energy to face and solve problems. Connect with your fellow artists. Your community is what really helps you survive.”

Name: Sara Garden Armstrong
Occupation: Visual Artist

1. You lived more than 30 years in the sprawling, expensive artists’ Mecca of New York City. How did you survive and thrive in that potentially-overwhelming environment? 

Before I moved, I’d been teaching at UAB. I’d tell my students, “You have to be creative. You have to approach things in a different way.” When I arrived in New York, I realized I’d have to take my own medicine. (Laughs) I had no plan. I had to create my own path. I knew I didn’t want side jobs that would interfere with the pursuit of my art making. I tried selling Canon copiers. I was not a salesman. I tried many different things and had a good time doing them. I found a good gig as a tour guide. That fit me and my schedule. I’m an artist. Artists survive.

2. You seem to really embrace the entrepreneurial side of being an artist. Has that always been the case?

Yes. One of things I did early on was to buy a piece of real estate. I sold “art futures” to pay for the renovation. Basically, I received funding from my investors either for art to be produced in the future or as a loan, including interest payments, with my art work as security for the loan. In fact, I had some great people in Birmingham who were part of my “art futures” venture. For me, it’s been important to continually sharpen my skills. There’s a New York organization, Creative Capital, with really valuable career services for artists. Beyond the content they offer, I’ve gained so much from the people I’ve met when attending their programs, especially when there’s a mix of people coming from different artistic disciplines. For artists, it’s so important to be a constant student.

3. Your desire to be a life-long learner is a really admirable quality. Balance that out for us with your fatal flaw.

I’m a little obsessive. (Laughs) I had a reputation, even in New York, for working a lot, a lot. It takes it. I’m continually refining and struggling over my work. When is a piece complete? When is more detail needed? How do you objectively step back and really see your work critically? It’s all about seeing. And it’s not just the work itself. I obsess over spaces. They’re such wonderful challenges. They give me information. And I don’t have tight control over someone else’s installation space, so, once the art has entered the room, I react all over again. I always feel like my art moves or changes once it enters an exhibition space, and I have to be flexible and willing to make further adjustments. So much of art is about the coming together of the work, the space and the participants in the experience. 

4. What advice would you give to Birmingham’s younger artists?

Don’t play it too safe. Go different places, explore different cultures. Put yourself in positions where you feel lost. It gives you incredible energy to face and solve problems. Connect with your fellow artists. Your community is what really helps you survive. Or, at least, that has always been the case for me. Set aside time with the team you make for yourself to brainstorm, provide constructive feedback, co-think. Be patient with yourself – building a career as an artist takes time and effort. I hope, now that I’m permanently back home, that Birmingham’s growing population of young artists will include me in their conversations. I want to be part of a community where all ages and cultures are working together, and I hope I can make a contribution. Most importantly, I’d tell young artists, “Do what you want to do.” I pretty much did that.

Sara Garden Armstrong marks a homecoming, by JESSE CHAMBERS

Iron City Ink

Sara Garden Armstrong will show her installation at 5 p.m. Feb. 2 at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, while her drawings will be displayed from 6-9 p.m. Feb. 2 at 21st Street Gallery.

Artist and Birmingham native Sara Garden Armstrong has lived in New York 35 years, making drawings, artist books and sculptures.

And the city’s been good for her, she said by phone from her Queens studio.

“It has a huge amount of energy, an amazing amount of art to see, wonderful conversations,” she said. “I love this place.”

Armstrong certainly doesn’t regret moving to New York from Birmingham in 1982 but, she said, “Now it’s time for another change.” She’s got a plan to move back to the Magic City full time in 2017.

“I want to do some things in Birmingham,” she said, and she’ll get started with two exhibitions, running concurrently Feb. 2-March 4.

Her multimedia installation, Breath and Shadow, will be at the Vulcan Materials Gallery at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.

Echo, an exhibition of 20 large-scale drawings, will be at the 21st Street Gallery.

Armstrong has exhibited nationally and internationally for almost 40 years, and her pieces are found in such collections as the Museum of Modern Art. 

And her work has one overarching theme. “It’s always organic,” she said.

Breath and Shadow is no exception. It mixes Armstrong’s work from different periods, including early drawings and hanging sculptures that look like natural shapes, such as leaves and seed pods. 

Some of the sculptures will move, cast shadows and appear to breathe, creating a living environment of air, light and sound.

“Breath and breathing have been in my work for a long time,” Armstrong said.

The Echo drawings, from the 1980s and 1990s, explore the same sculptural forms used in the ASFA installation.

“Some of these have never been shown,” she said.

Armstrong’s excited about returning to Birmingham, where she’s often visited and made work — including an atrium sculpture at UAB’s Civitan building.

One reason is affordability, given the Big Apple’s high costs.

“I have a gorgeous [work] space that I can’t have in New York,” she said.

It helps that Armstrong is moving back to her own three-story building downtown, the 21st Street Studios, which she bought in 1979 and has rented out.

The building contains artist spaces, as well as the 21st Street Gallery, the recently opened Ground Floor Contemporary gallery and the American Institute of Architects chapter.

Birmingham also has changed for the better, according to Armstrong.

“It’s much more open and has more going on,” she said.

And Armstrong sees positive signs in the visual arts community.

“There’s a younger group [of artists] that are doing some really interesting things,” she said. “I would like to help contribute to that energy that’s here.”

Echo is curated by Cumbee Tyndal, ASFA visual arts instructor.

The Vulcan Materials Gallery at ASFA will host an opening for Breath and Shadow Feb. 2 at 5 p.m.

The Echo opening at 21st Street Gallery, 111 Richard Arrington Jr. Blvd. S., will be Feb. 2, 6-9 p.m.