Clarissa Sligh

(American, born 1939)

Artist Clarissa Sligh is a visual artist, lecturer, and essayist. She combines imagery, photography, and text into powerful narrative artworks, artist books, and installations. Her art explores memory, identity, transformation, and perception. When Sligh was 15 years old she became the lead plaintiff in the 1955 school desegregation case in Virginia State. Her work – first in math and science working for NASA, later in business, and finally, in the arts – takes into account change, transformation and complication.

Sligh earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1961; a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual art from Howard University in Washington D.C. in 1972; an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973; and a Master of Fine Arts in visual art from Howard University in Washington D.C. in 1999. In her first career, she worked at NASA in the manned space flight program. In 1987, Sligh left her day job to focus on working as an artist. Her artworks are featured at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Smithsonian's National African American Museum, and more. She lives and works in Asheville, North Carolina.