Mother and daughters, bound by art

Had Los Angeles artist Betye Saar accomplished nothing in this life but her challenging mixed-media assemblages, she would be credited with a potent statement about race and identity. But Saar also raised three daughters, two of whom have amplified and spun out her themes in art that attaches the word "dynasty" to the Saar family name.

For the first time, the Ackland Museum of Art presents a comprehensive exhibition of all three women's work. "Family Legacies: The Art of Betye, Lezley and Alison Saar" is a fascinating, complex and often difficult journey navigated through a rich field of assemblage, painting and altered objects. Though a shared visual vocabulary can be traced through the family's oeuvre, the show offers the opportunity to pull apart the common threads and differentiate the unique fingerprints of each artist.

The 50-work exhibition is curated by the Ackland's Barbara Matilsky and Jessica Dallow of the University of Alabama at Birmingham for the Chapel Hill museum and three other venues. It opens with Betye's 1964 "Girl Children," an etching that maps out what would become the subject of her art: an exploration of what it means to be an African-American woman in contemporary society.

Betye then evolves her printmaking in "Black Girl's Window," a series set into old window frames, allowing for a relationship and progression of images conjuring esoteric magic and personal symbolism. Another wall is devoted to a delicate, lyrical series made from her great aunt Hattie's handkerchiefs. These ethereal and poetic collages shimmer and float as delicately as the very butterfly wings that take flight from their embroidered edges.

Alison's sculpture "Inheritance" anchors the entrance gallery space. A child-size figure, carved of wood, is covered in patterned, patinated ceiling tin. Atop her head, she balances an impossibly huge sphere made of knotted cotton fabric. Suggesting Atlas carrying the weight of the world, this work poignantly relates the overwhelming burden any child may inherit from her family, and perhaps more specifically, the African-American legacy of slavery or domestic labor. Washing and ablution are also implied by the globe of neatly tied linens, as well as the vision of contemporary African women gracefully carrying vessels and goods atop their heads. which the artist claims as her original inspiration.

Lezley Saar is represented by a series of special tableaux, beginning with "A Rake's Progress." Literally "carved" out of a book, Lezley creates a small painting reminiscent of the Latino tradition of retablos, often portraits of saints or records made to commemorate a miracle. This particular image memorializes the moment when she persuaded her husband to have children.

In the recess of the carved book, we find him dressed in a Pierrot-like costume, yoked with symbols of domesticity. A cocoonlike nest filled with eggs hangs from his shoulders. Flanked by woody magnolia stems and bits of sky blue tile, he is framed by imagery of waterfalls. Tiny nails hold all the components together, yet obsessively dot the surface, visually relating the piece to African nkisi figures, which are often ritualistically studded with nails.

Lezley also creates large paintings, often using collaged bits of kitschy found-art paintings as a base, as in "Geneva Saar-Agustsson -- Labeled Autistic." Here, the central figure of her daughter is represented primarily by a face, given a zippered mouth, below which blood vessels flow over plastic flowers that spill into a still life painting of flowers. Around her, the broken spikes of a crib radiate, turning her into something of the figure of a saint -- haloed imagery found in another of Lezley's works, "Ascension of a Lilyskin."