Martha Joanne Alf

1930 - 2019

August 13, 1930 - September 13, 2019 The nationally celebrated artist Martha Alf transitioned peacefully at home on September 13, 2019. Born August 13, 1930 in Berkeley, California, to Foster Wise Powell, an attorney, and Julia Vivian Kane, a legal secretary, Martha Joanne Alf was preceded in death by her husband Edward (Eddie) Franklin Alf, Jr., a Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, and her son Richard Alf, a co-founder of Comic-Con. Recognized for her critically acclaimed paintings of toilet paper rolls, which were included in the "1975 Biennial of Contemporary Art" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and her drawings of pears and other fruits and vegetables, which are included in many college textbooks, Alf was also proficient in photography. During the course of an art career that spanned five decades, Alf's art was included in 42 solo exhibitions, among them a 1984 career retrospective organized by the late Josine Ianco-Starrels for the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and more than 87 group exhibitions. Alf's art is also represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.Alf spent much of her early life in La Mesa, California, where she studied art at Grossmont High School. In 1938, her family moved to San Diego, where Alf studied art at San Diego State University and met her future husband, Edward Franklin Alf, Jr. They were married in 1951, soon before Edward was drafted for service in Korea. Their only child, Richard Alf, was born in 1952. While at San Diego State University, Alf studied painting with Everett Gee Jackson. She continued her painting studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she earned her MFA. Her instructors included William Brice, Richard Diebenkorn, and Lee Mullican. Alf became recognized as a nationally significant artist in the 1970s for her "cylinder paintings," each of which depicts a toilet paper roll positioned like a monument on an empty stage. She painted many of the cylinder paintings in unorthodox colors to express a range of emotions, but also approached the works as Josef Albers had in his "Homage to the Square" series, by repeating a constant image from painting to painting, but varying the colors. In the late 1970s Alf turned to making graphite drawings of fruits and vegetables which she arranged like actors on a stage, acting out psychodramas. The most frequent subject of choice was the pear which, when shown alone, was at times considered by the artist to be a self-portrait. Alf shifted from black and white to color in her pastel drawings of the early 1980s. Continuing to draw staged fruits, with the pear being the dominant subject, Alf exaggerated color and light to the point that the drawings assumed a spiritual dimension. She returned to painting in the late 1980s, producing a series of painted depictions of pears rendered in colors so bright and intense that one art critic referred to them as "psychedelic pears." In the 21st century, Alf concentrated almost exclusively on photography, which she practiced for many years alongside painting and drawing. Concurrent with the 1970s cylinder paintings, Alf made photographs of hand-colored toilet paper rolls as a means of studying color. She subsequently made photos of other subjects, including her familiar fruits and vegetables. In 1998, Alf began making photographs of pigeons roosting on a window sill opposite her home. She fed them to keep them coming, named each pigeon, created narratives for them, and produced a video featuring the pigeons, entitled "Birdland." Around the same time, she began photographing still life arrangements of unusual objects that she had collected over the years. Her final project, created in her assisted-living studio apartment, is a series of photographs of carefully arranged elaborate tableaus of fruits and flowers, photographed with her iPad. According to art critic David S. Rubin, "Among Alf's many accomplishments, she was especially proud to have her art represented in books by the pop culture art aficionado Sister Wendy Beckett, who first contacted Martha by sending a fan letter."