Friday, 25 September, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Artist Doris Bittar’s latest works explore layers and patterning, whether though her Conversations with Modernism, paintings in which she examines “how a student of art who is also a colonial subject converses with the more recent Masters” or Walking Patterns, 3-dimensional assemblages of remnants collected on walks in the Middle East and California, overlaid with invented, faintly arabesque lattice patterning.
Meet the Artist
Doris Bittar is a multi-disciplinary artist who closely follows history and intertwines it with pattern and decorative structures. She was born in Baghdad, Iraq of Lebanese parents. A year later her parents returned to Lebanon. Just ahead of the Lebanese civil war, she immigrated to New York with her family. She graduated from a high school that imprinted her with a curiosity to bridge differences between people. After graduating with a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the State University of New York at Purchase she worked as a union organizer for five years. She settled in southern California where she raised two sons with her husband. My Arabic identity began to reveal itself and influence my art making as significant events in the Middle East unfolded – seemingly without respite. She received my Masters of Fine Arts at the University of California, San Diego in 1993, and began to exhibit, teach, and write. In 2005 she moved to Beirut during dramatic political shifts. She currently teaches in the Visual Arts department at California State University San Marcos, travel to gather the “stuff” for new projects, work with civil rights organizations, and write.
