Ba is
one of a series of three
a collaborative piece

To create the “canvas” and portrait, the artist used her own handmade papers as a base, then added layers of tissue paper, wax paper, damar resin, and old house paint. Most of the tissue paper stock was harvested at family Christmases and birthdays. The frame was hand-built by Lou Pfau, a sort of modern-day Renaissance polymath. The moulding is crafted from cherry found many years ago in South Roebuck, his neighborhood, east of Birmingham.

Tara Stallworth Lee is a photographer concentrating in analog processes. She is also a collage artist, papermaker and bookmaker. Her photographs address themes of affinity, kinship, motherhood, love, and loss. Lee uses any combination of her own images, harvested imagery, handmade papers, and repurposed materials to construct collaged portraits that explore human phenomena from around the globe and throughout history. She regards her work as a figurative language through which to communicate and contemplate perceptions of human behavior, interpersonal relationships, and the relevance of the natural landscape to the human condition.