Lezley Irene Saar is an African American artist whose artwork is responsive to race, gender, female identity, and her ancestral history.

She continued her studies in 1976 at San Francisco State University, and supported her artistic practice by working at KPFA radio in Berkeley, and creating illustrations for Bay area writers such as Ishmael Reed.

Drawing on her experience working for Ishmael Reed and exposure to Bar area literary scene Saar's constructed altered books in 1989, which she created while pregnant with her first child in 1989.

Employing found objects, oil, acrylic, fabric, photographs, Saar’s work is a comment on themes of "hybridity, acceptance, and belonging.

She stated the exhibition "resembles a series of seven shrines — sacred places where visitors may commune with spirits from the past, present and future.