In her journals, SARA reflected,
“In Hindu philosophy… to find out who you are, you ask what you are not, then you are left with what you are.”
Today we celebrate the 98th anniversary of Sara Joyce’s birth. Joyce died in 2011, but through her extensive journals and more than 400 works of art left behind, we continue to learn about and know more of the woman and the creative we have come to call SARA.
Many ask, as SARA herself noted in one of her writings, was she “outsider artist, primitive artist, alternative artist, self-taught artist?”
Although SARA lived in rural or sparsely populated areas of Idaho her entire adult life, her extensive studies, wide readings, and personal explorations gave her a worldly view. In her journal writings, SARA once referred to herself as an art sophisticate. Based on the body of her collective works, the study and detail in her journals, and her reference to art and artists as it relates to her own life experiences, this seems a label as good as any.
Happy Birthday, SARA.
A page from SARA’s journal (J-13 PG-43), where she attributes artist labels to fabric half-bodies.