An image I saw of an African-American man’s skin nailed to the wall like a hunting pelt, constructed (fortunately) not of flesh but rusted roofing tin has stayed with me, haunted me, since I first saw it in the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill last Saturday. If there is anywhere a more powerful image of the terror that was slavery, I have never seen it. Indeed, the figure’s spread-eagled posture calls to mind other, more recent images as well  -- prisoners at Attica, stripped naked, forced to assume this same position after Rockefeller’s goons retook the yard, even Rodney King, beaten into this position on the streets of Los Angeles.

Perhaps it is all the more amazing that this work was in a show that celebrates – legitimately – roots & family, the art work of the amazing Betye Saar & her two daughters, Lezley & Alison. The life sized pelt – its title is Skin Deep – is the work of Alison, whose work I was familiar with primarily from her illustrations for Erica Hunt’s book, Arcade, a decade back. As I circled & recircled through the galleries of this exhibit, accompanied by Ken Rumble & Chris Vitiello, I found myself struck by pieces, paying almost no mind to who did what.

Betye, for example, who has several pieces in the show that explore the implications of her own light skin within the American black community, as one piece entitled Cream (2001), a collage on hand-made paper – its tone exactly that of French vanilla ice cream – on which she’s attached an ancient, white child’s dress, at the bottom of which we see an image, perhaps of the artist herself as an infant (she’s 80 this year), above which is a little lock of hair, light brown in a small white bow, while at the top two other images, also ancient head shots of a man & woman – the triangulation is patently genealogical. Around all this are the handprints of small children. To describe it like this gives almost no sense of its elegance or cohesion, which are in fact integral to its impact on the viewer.

Lezley, on the other hand, is the most painterly of the three and often makes figurative/narrative objects, reminiscent of Joseph Cornell or Santeria altars. One can see everything in her work from Romare Bearden to Simon Rodia, the visionary sailor behind the great ship that is the Watts Towers. Her work is full of rich colors &, like both her mother and sister, reflects a sharp wit that undercuts any sense of an aesthetics of victimization.

This wit is at the core of the family’s politics. Two of Alison’s pieces, for example, employ wire to embody hair, entangled in one instance with small bottles, perhaps baby food jars, in the other piece one of the objects is a magnet. In another, she presents a mulatto woman – both in a print & a wooden sculpture – as striped, dreadlocks standing straight up to accentuate the effect.  And it’s around this issue of hybrid identities that one senses the impact of Betye’s late husband, Richard, of German & Scotch heritage, a painter turned art conservationist.

I’m happy to note that this exhibit both has a catalog – tho I didn’t see any copies at the Ackland when I was there – and is set to travel, first to Pasadena, then San Jose’s Museum of Art, then the Palmer at Penn State, where it will be from January thru April next year. I can assure my friends in San Francisco that this will be worth the drive down to San Jose to see. The Saar family is not unlike the Berrigan clan in poetry, an embarrassment of riches, each one doing significant & visually meaty work. The show is both serious & fun, which is a great combination. But I know that I’m going to be seeing that man-pelt in my dreams.