The Space Between: Donald Saff, The Constellation Series
September 16 – December 17, 2023
Center Gallery
Donald Saff (b. 1937) is an artist, art historian, educator, lecturer, and a major force in the American prints and multiple movement since the 1960s. Saff has played a critical role in the development of the arts in the Tampa Bay region, founding Graphicstudio at the University of South Florida in 1968. Now part of the USF Institute for Research in Art, Graphicstudio, explores art-making techniques working in tandem with new aesthetic expressions by leading and emerging artists. The constant push by collaborating artists and studio staff creates new possibilities for artistic practice and is at the forefront of international fine art publishing. Saff also holds the title of Emeritus Dean and Distinguished Professor at USF and was a curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He has taught and authored books and numerous articles in the field of art history. His own work was documented in the 2010 book Donald Saff: Art In Collaboration. His art is in the permanent collection of many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In addition to Saff’s remarkable career as an artist and art educator, he is a renowned horologist and collector of clocks, having published and taken part in many publications on the topic of timekeeping. Saff was awarded a certificate from the Guinness Book of World Records in 2015 for his work in completing the world’s most accurate pendulum clock. The clock, titled “Clock B” can trace the origins of its construction back to 1975 from master clockmaker Martin Burgess. The certificate stated that the clock was “the world’s most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air.”
Throughout his career, the topic of time and timekeeping has remained influential in Saff’s work as an artist. Intrinsic to his practice, objects and symbols appear to the viewer in liminal space on both the physical and psychological level. While the viewer can identify everyday objects, animals and identities in his work, there exists a push-pull between the eye and the psyche, in an attempt to decipher both their familiarity and borderline nonsensical environments. The viewer appears to be looking through the space between this world and another, a portal to another realm, suggestive through inverted objects and symbols that characterize themselves as both familiar and alien in the same instance. Saff’s work does not rely on the laws of physics as we see them in day-to-day life. Given all that is known of the length and breadth of Donald Saff and his various areas of mastery, the viewer is offered a glimpse of these objects beyond the two-dimensional plane of the print. Rather, if we are to embrace Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, the idea that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, the viewer can slip through an intimate window into Saff’s world.
From the very foundations of humanity, civilizations began keeping time through tracking the stars. Identities were assigned to clusters of star groups with perceivable patterns, the symbols of which can be traced back millennia. The symbolism of this series does not lie in the constellations themselves, but the space in between them. The vision of the artist, the precision of the horologist, the dedication of the educator. In his everyday objects, his life is ever spinning between planes of existence. He reaches beyond the influence of abstract expressionism and somehow exists at the same time in both worlds, but never fully within the other. Saff weaves a narrative that touches both the larger scale of the space time continuum and the introspection of his inner worlds. A singular identity cannot be assigned to Donald Saff. By offering a look into his own portals, both between the neurons that fire his creative genius to form his print making process, the mechanical prowess of horology, to the precision and dedication to education, The Constellation Series presents the viewer with the greater perspective of the artist himself.
The Leepa Rattner Museum of Art is proud to present the Donald Saff Constellation Series for the first time, an invaluable donation to our collection from Francine Messano in honor of her granddaughter, Savvanah Cole.
This collection is made up of 15 etchings with aquatint and watercolor. They were published by Getler/Pall Gallery in New York and the printer was Palm Press in Tampa.