This generously illustrated book offers the first comprehensive overview of the work of the Los Angeles–based interdisciplinary artist Francis Stark. Frances Stark deftly deploys text, image, and literary sources in her drawings, collages, paintings, and video works that reflect on her roles as artist, mother, woman, and teacher.

Throughout her career she has experimented with alternative

modes of expression, as in her critically acclaimed video My

Best Thing; her PowerPoint work Structures that fit my opening

(and other parts considered in relation to their whole)

and

the performance Put a Song in Your Thing. Companion to an

exhibition that documents Stark’s 25-year long career, this

book contains 125 works in which Stark employs words and

images to create provocative and self-referential works that

speak to the complexities of daily life. This book includes fullpage

detailed images that provide an insight into the highly

tactile and complex nature of Stark’s work. Also included are

newly commissioned essays, and a collection of brief reflections

by a variety of prominent artists and writers whom Stark

asked to revisit specific topics they’ve discussed or written

about previously. Filled with high-quality reproductions and

thoughtful commentary, this book is the definitive resource on

Stark’s accomplished, varied, and affecting body of work.