Events

The Armory Center for the Arts is pleased to present Sara Kathryn Arledge: Serene for the Moment from January 27 through May 12, 2019 in the Armory’s Caldwell Gallery.  The exhibition has been organized by Irene Tsatsos, the Armory’s Director of Exhibition Programs/Chief Curator.  It will be preceded by a free, public reception on January 26 from 7-9pm. Major support for the exhibition comes from the Pasadena Art Alliance, with special thanks to the Sara Kathryn Arledge Memorial Trust. An under-recognized painter and innovator of mid-20th century experimental cinema, Sara Kathryn Arledge (1911-1998) was a prolific artist who emphasized the eerie in the mundane and the disorienting in the beautiful.

Defying convention and authority, Arledge created a diverse and experimental body of work in between film and painting. “My plan,” she said, ‘was to extend the nature of painting to include time.” One of her earliest influences was a performance by Thomas Wilfred, on his Clavilux, at the Pasadena Playhouse, which she saw in 1928 as a teenager.

As a filmmaker Arledge is considered a pioneer of ciné-dance (dance made uniquely for and by the medium of film) combining avant-garde dance with film editing techniques to “add time to painting.”

The exhibition will include Arledge’s seven films and hand-painted glass slides, which are held by the Pacific Film Archive (PFA) in Berkeley and only recently digitized. It will also include over 80 of her brilliant works on paper, which span six decades, as well as ephemera and archival material, including storyboards for dance-films.