A Scarsdale Artist Creates a Genre of Her Own

The work of contemporary artist Saya Woolfalk cannot be categorized easily – part painter, graphic designer sculptor, filmmaker, musician, futurist and philosopher –this talented Scarsdale native uses a variety of media to create highly original installations that are ripe with cultural and political overtones. Asked to describe what she does, Woolfalk says," I build installations and work with museums to build fictional cultures, videos, and performances. They begin with a fictional story that I flesh out using video, painting, and art."

Many of the installations include life-size mannequins, dressed in colorful costumes and ensconced in fictional environments where they examine cultural differences, racial stereotypes, gender types, and human relationships to the natural world. Woolfalk uses these mannequins to create live performances and integrates video as part of the tableau and as method of recording her work. To understand her work, take a look at this video of her exhibit at the Montclair Art Museum in 2012 where Woolfalk created the museums first solo multi media exhibition, centered on a society of women called, The Emphatics. 

Woolfalk is receiving national and international recognition and her stories are on view worldwide. Her fanciful creations are now on view at places as far flung as the Studio Museum in Harlem to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. This year, Woolfalk was one of six artists selected from among 600 applicants for the Artist Studio Program at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn. http://smackmellon.org/index.php/contact/current-artists/The Program provides artists who are working in visual arts media with free private studio space as well as a $5,000 fellowship. Woolfalk debunked from her Manhattan studio to take advantage of this offer that allows her to work near her home in Brooklyn.

For Woolfalk, it all began in Greenacres, where she grew up on Walworth Avenue and was encouraged by her parents to develop her creativity in art, music, piano, violin and dance classes, beginning at an early age. Her home environment was multi-cultural as her mother is Japanese and her father is Afro-American and white. Her parents still live and work in the Village where her dad has a law practice and her mother, also a lawyer, works as his accountant.

Woolfalk also credits her grade school teachers, especially Mrs. Harley at Greenacres Elementary School, with providing her for the inspiration behind some of her work that continues today. Harley encouraged creative exploration via an archaeological dig, doing an ecological survey or a multi cultural study – themes that are echoed in Woolfalk's installations.

She complemented her school classes with art classes at AB Art in Hartsdale with Joan Fenroe where she drew, made oil paintings and did graphic design projects that developed her love of color and design. In high school, she moved on to study with Joan Busing who had a background in textile design and taught her about pattern and repeat design. She also remembers an art teacher at Scarsdale High School who was very supporting of her work and permitted her unlimited access to the high school art room and supplies.

Woolfalk did more than art during her years at Scarsdale High School. She acted in summer theatre, sang in the chorus and during college at Brown she majored in both economics and visual art. She is now working on a project about a group of people who create a corporation to distribute eco-utopian ideas – and she calls on her knowledge of many disciplines to bring these ideas to life.

She has a full agenda planned for 2014. In the next few months her work will appear at the Brooklyn Museum, followed by exhibitions at the Asian Museum, The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA and the Seattle Art Museum. Though Woolfalk has much on her plate, we couldn't detect any stress in her voice. She sounds upbeat, exuberant and enthused about the way the world has embraced her vibrant, multi-cultural, sci-fi creations.

What advice does she give to any young artists in our audience? Here is what she said, "Only become an artist if you really want to be one. It takes hard work and perseverance. Listen to your mentors and teachers while simultaneously cultivating your own voice. Hear the responses of others and respond to them. But maintain your own voice.

If you would like to see her work, her closest exhibit to the 'dale can now be viewed at the Afrofuturism exhibit at the Studio Museum of Harlem and visit Saya Woolfalk's website to learn more about her and her work.