I asked Saya Woolfalk to share her sketchbooks this week because I find her work so intriguing. Besides the bright crazy colors and imagery, Saya’s work also tells interesting stories. Here’s what Saya says about her work (from her artist statement)-

Drawing material from various realms of the visual—pop-culture, ritual, street-spectacle—I use art as a laboratory to catalogue and critique our socio-visual landscape. Combining performance, sculpture, painting, and video, my installations investigate and playfully re-imagine the representational systems that hierarchically shape our lives. My art is an experimental ground where I create alternative bodies, environments, and consciousnesses.

A black, white, and Japanese woman, my work is inspired by ethnographic, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory. I’ve spent the last two years going back and forth between Brazil and the United States. Both countries have had an enormous influence on my practice.

My sketches are a notational system; from them, I make paintings that recombine texts, images, and objects. From the two-dimensional I move to the three-dimensional and create landscapes. Through performance and video I activate those landscapes and produce narrative.

I am so glad she was willing to share such an intimate look at her behind the scenes. Her sketchbook is full of writing, plans, clippings and colorful drawings. Check out Saya gorgeous paintings here and also her amazing 3-d work and in progress work on her newest project No Place by clicking the link on her homepage here. Thanks Saya for sharing!

© Julia Rothman 2007