Tara Donovan

“A drinking straw very obviously has a use. A million drinking straws is something else entirely.”- Tara Donovan

Tara Donovan’s work has a way of drawing people in immediately. She is well known for her ability to take everyday items, often overlooked, and turn them into something abstract and foreign.  She has used materials such as plastic cups, straws, file cards, and nails to create large paintings, sculptures, and installations. 

It is not just the media or sheer size of the work that makes Donovan’s work stand out though. It is also her consciousness of the world around her work. When looking to make something out of a material she experiments with it first. How does it react with light? How does it react with shadow? How does it change with the size and quantity of the material? She considers things like this, and how they will affect the experience with the art. Pushing to find her media’s true potential.

Consider one of her untitled pieces shown at the Armory Show. The piece is 33 feet of plastic tubing clustered together forming a slope. At one end of the piece, the tubing towers over viewers filling their senses completely. At the other, the tubing stands at a mere two inches. Color shifts up the sculpture as light hits each size differently. If you changed the enviorment, the piece would change, and the viewer’s experience would change too. 

Not all of Donovan’s pieces are this heavily reliant on the enviorment around it. Her untitled piece made from Myler and hot glue does not change as drastically with the enviorment it is placed in. Instead, the piece transports viewers into an enviorment all of its own. 

The piece is massive in size, similar to many of her other works. It has organic and has a very biological feel to it. Spherical masses of layered media stuck together like growing organisms. It is reminiscent of a plant from the seabed or something from another planet. Viewers may feel as though they have been transported to an alien planet. It is quite loud compared to her other works. 

Tara Donovan’s work is the kind best experienced. The way she uses everyday material and the enviorment it is placed in to create something entirely new is not something easily captured with words or a photograph. Its this combination of the every day and the world around it that makes her work so out of ordinary.