Author Description

This generously illustrated book offers the first comprehensive overview of the work of the Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Francis Stark. Frances Stark deftly deploys text, image, and literary sources in her drawings, collages, paintings, and video works that reflect on her roles as artist, mother, woman, and teacher. Throughout her career she has experimented with alternative modes of expression, as in her critically acclaimed video My Best Thing; her PowerPoint work Structures that fit my opening (and other parts considered in relation to their whole); and the performance Put a Song in Your Thing. Companion to an exhibition that documents Stark's 25-year long career, this book contains 125 works in which Stark employs words and images to create provocative and self-referential works that speak to the complexities of daily life. This book includes fullpage detailed images that provide an insight into the highly tactile and complex nature of Stark's work. Also included are newly commissioned essays, and a collection of brief reflections by a variety of prominent artists and writers whom Stark asked to revisit specific topics they've discussed or written about previously. Filled with high-quality reproductions and thoughtful commentary, this book is the definitive resource on Stark's accomplished, varied, and affecting body of work.