As a young artist, Alison Saar avoided using found objects. She didn’t want to be compared with her mother, Betye Saar, who often includes them in her work. But Alison soon realized that using found materials came naturally to her. In Si J’etais Blanc, Alison uses tile and glass to create a figurative sculpture in a mosaic style. Alison’s mother is black, and her father is white. When she was growing up, this cultural experience sometimes made her feel out of place. But Alison learned to use this feeling to make art about people from various cultures. She carves a life-sized sculpture of a Mexican American man from a barrio (a Spanish-speaking neighborhood) out of salvaged wood. Inspired by a story her mother told her as a child and by her black heritage, Alison develops a narrative that is both personal and universal in her sculpture Chaos in the Kitchen.