Tara Donovan (Born 1969 in New York) transforms everyday, disposable materials into formally elegant sculptures, installations, and works on paper. She has made works from massive accumulations of pins, straws, toothpicks, tarpaper, tape, buttons, paper plates, and pencils. The means by which Donovan manipulates these objects are often simple—ripping, stacking, twisting, piling, cutting, grouping—yet the results are spectacular. The artist’s working method involves initial testing of and experimenting with a material; she tries to remain true to its inherent properties or qualities at the same time as she pushes it beyond this point. As Donovan has said: “every new material comes with a specific repetitive action that builds the work.” At first glance, we might not recognize how or with what Donovan’s works are made. With closer inspection, the process and the materials reveal themselves, leaving viewers surprised and delighted by how the artist makes something so familiar, so ordinary, unexpected and new.
Untitled (Rubber Bands) displays Donovan’s unique use of common materials—here, in the service of printmaking. Rather than traditional printmaking tools, Donovan employs hundreds of rubber bands, which she arranged in a wooden box. Setting the bands in place with glue and stiffening them with hairspray, she creates a relief print of the undulating pattern. The resulting black and white image is hypnotic, its dense, looping forms recalling the weave rug.
