Tara Donovan

I stumbled upon Tara Donovan’s work in the ICA in Boston several years ago and was taken aback by how creative, simple, and stunning it was. She is an artist who is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York. She did her undergraduate studies at Corcoran College of Art and Design and then continued with her MFA at the Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work fashions simple everyday materials into awe inspiring installations. She takes something as simple as a button, a pencil, or tape and used repetition to create biomorphic forms that fill rooms.

My favorite piece by her was done with Styrofoam cups. She glued them all together to create a blanket of cloud like forms that hung from the ceiling below the lights. The lights made the cups glow and appear to be a living organism. The cups cover the entirety of the ceiling, and in some places droop so low that the viewer must duck out of the way. You can smell the Styrofoam. It’s like being transported into another world. If you'd like to see more these images and more can be found Here.

When one walks into her installations a close relationship between the viewer and the artwork is quickly established.One reminisces about looking at land forms from the aerial view of a plane, or being under water looking at beautiful coral.The work is enjoyed by serious artists and public viewers alike.

Her art is successful on many levels. Her biomorphic forms and the tedium behind the process of her art fascinate me. Although the final product is stunning, the process of gluing and taping things a thousand times over is very compelling.The viewer can relate to the process and appreciate the final product.

Stephen Gammell

Stephen Gammell is a self taught artist from Demoines, Iowa. His father was an artist and encouraged him to follow in his footsteps. He began as a free lance artist, but has since become exclusively an illustrator for children and young adult books. I am sure you already know who he is, however, you probably do not know him by name. Everyone has encountered Alfred Schwartz's "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" series at some point in their lives. Although the stories are sub par, and hardly frightening, everyone who has seen the books remembers the haunting, grotesque and absolutely fascinating black and white charcoal pictures. These images, which still turn your stomach and gave you night mares as a kid are the work of Stephen Gammell.

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His work is just absolutely fascinating to me. I enjoy his lack of color and his messy style. They are very strong illustrations that evoke a strong feeling out of the viewer. I can't get over how creepy they are! I feel like that makes his work very successful. Although his work is usually figurative, it is also very atmospheric. It has a very smokey quality. Atmosphere is something that I try to create in my pieces. The creation of mood in work is something that interests me.

As an avid reader of horror fiction I feel like the strength in this genre of the grotesque and terrifying is the ability to manipulate the reader/viewers emotions. This is done by forming a relationship with the piece and developing the narrative that surrounds it. Having more narrative is something that I haven't considered in my work before, but it seems to be a reoccurring theme in artists I enjoy. This will be especially relevant when I discuss my next artist. This could perhaps be done with something as easy as adding a title. A little clue to the idea, feeling or story that prompted the image.

Robert Frank Abplanalp

I went to the Artists Row at the Rochester Public Market last weekend and saw some very interesting and inspiring artist, but one stood out. I know very little about Robert Frank Abplanalp besides that I really enjoy his art. At the market, I briefly complimented his art and took a business card before I ran away scared I would buy something. He can be found at robertfrank.etsy.com and robertfrankart.blogspot.com. Here are some examples of his work, they can all be found on his blog, which you should check out! His work is also hanging at Muddy Waters Cafe until February.Life of Leisure- acrylic on paper

Feathers and Flies- Acrylic and Ink

His pen drawings and the use of colored washes are what drew me to his work. These are elements that are becoming very important in my own work. His works are illustrative and his titles imply a little bit of narrative. They are playful, dark, and curious. His subject matter is varied, but two major themes are imaginary forms and plants. There is a lot of texture to his work and repetition. He also frequently uses borders. Something that I feel makes his work even more storybook-like. In my pen drawings I never use borders, but my figures usually have some relationship with the edge of the image.

I have never been one to use titles, but earlier this week I talked with another art major about them, and Robert Frank's successful use of them have made me give them a second thought. I think his titles give the viewer a clue to understanding his work. They don't blatantly explain the work, however they give the viewer a piece of how he understands his work.

Why I Make Art

There has never been a time in my life when I didn't make art. As a child, while my sister got a cd player and video games for her birthday, I was given heaps of cheap A.C. Moore art kits. I was always enrolled in art classes outside of my normal school. My mother has always dabbled in art as a hobby, and that has been a large influence on my own artistic development. We always had water colors, or arts and craft supplies in excessive amounts. It was an essential part of my childhood. I still have sketch books from elementary school. My grandmother on my father's side was also an artist, and no doubt encouraged the creative spark in her granddaughter.

So I guess I make art because I never have not made it. It's a simple as that, but I will try to elaborate.

Art is an outlet, and part of how I identify myself. I think in recent years it has become a way to try and understand myself and how I feel about the rest of the world. I have very existential moments in my life, where I feel like I'm looking through a window at everything. I'm not much of a talker, and can keep to myself often. Perhaps it has something to do with being a psychology major, but I love watching other people and how they interact and behave. I don't know if this is directly correlated with my art, but this contemplation is often the motivation for my art. It is not always the theme, but this ideas of isolation, observation, and general confusion seem to appear in most of my work. By general confusion I mean a sort of balance between trying to understand things and being okay with not knowing everything. I have found a lot of peace in my life by accepting that I don't know all of the answers. Understanding everything is not vital to my happiness, just watching, describing and exploring, that's what is important in my life and what is important in my art.

Also, to put it as simply as I can, art is fun. I make art, because I enjoy it, and people do no favors to the world denying themselves what makes them truly happy.

An Artists Dilemma

This past semester I have been seeping with imagery and ideas I am truly proud of. I'm creating work that finally feels like a solid representation of me. However, I feel it is lacking any real conceptual validity. The imagery comes to me usually in class. They are doodles that turn into elaborate drawings in the middle of class. I can't seem to find any real substance to them past the aesthetic value. I find that my art is more intrinsically motivated, and flows easier, and is of higher caliber when I focus on discovery and creation, instead of message. But I have a hard time accepting that as enough in my work.

This week I'm supposed to discuss the technical part of my work. I practice the philosophy of the messier the better. I really like to combined mediums, paint, pen, and print making. A lot of my work can be described as "Suessical" or surreal. I feel that this quality is best illustrated in a 2D medium because is makes it resemble a narrative in a book. Color is also very important to me. Although I am not a very bright and colorful person, I find myself using lots of colors in my art. Sometimes they are very vibrant, and other times they are washed out, but I really enjoy warm colors against messy black pen drawings. I think this semester I will probably be working in two different directions. First I will be making paintings, and then prints to compliment them. I like this pairing of the one of a kind unique image with a reproducible more controlled image. I think this juxtaposition is quintessentially me.

Terry Winters

My Drawing Professor mentioned Terry Winters immediately after poking her head into my studio and seeing some of my most recent work. After writing his name down, I plugged into Google and found this...













And this...


















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His work deals with abstract, but very obviously organic forms. He also seems to work with grids, patterns, and lots of repetition. His later work becomes much less form oriented and more focused on pattern. However, I can certainly relate to his earlier figurative works. These pieces are created by layers of repeated imagery that create an atmosphere.

Terry Winters is a painter from New York who graduated from Pratt Institute. He is an established drawer, painter, and print maker.

The atmospheric quality of his work is really what interests me. I find that he is able to create a surreal world constructed out of abstract imagery. This is something that I have found myself doing. It is not a world that one could walk into, but a place where these organic forms exist in a very natural way. It's hard to explain, but I feel like if I'm able to explain this I might understand my own work better.

Art and How it Functions in My Life.

Art is a form of expression and a process of understanding to me. Although is it not usually conclusive, my art strives to deal with concepts that cannot be easily articulated. These concepts are usually issues specific to my life or my observations of others. Recently it has become a serious process of introspection for me. I feel like my art is a way with which I try to understand and explain human behavior, whether it be a general behavior or my own.

Some of my motivation has been the people in my life. Human behavior and interaction fascinate me. I am a psychology student in addition to being an art student, and this becomes relevant in many of the themes of my work. I’m very interested in human emotion, expression, and social interactions. Studying humans from a psychological and anthropological perspective is fascinating to me. I am particularly fond of abstract expressionist art. I really like the concept of automatic painting and creating an image quickly that stems from the subconscious. I feel this type of art really incorporates my interest in psychology. I find it hard to be motivated sometimes, however I value intrinsic work the most. All my work that I truly appreciate comes unexpectedly. Lots of my inspiration starts in doodles when my mind is wandering. This semester I would really to work on being able to sit down and produce work whether I am in the mood or not. I think there is a lot to learn about sitting and forcing yourself to explore and produce work.

I don’t actually want to be an artist. I want to be a social worker. I just really like art. Art is an enriching part of my life, and a tool that I use to try and understand things that are hard to express in any other way. I never want it to be my primary source of income. I want to keep it at a hobby level, or a minor second career. My goal for this year as an artist is to create a foundation of work of which I’m truly proud. I want delve further into discovering who I am through art. This semester I’m going to be applying for Social Work Masters programs and potentially interested in Teach for America. In my future, I could potentially see art therapy or art education. But for now I really want to focus on family law and social work. I really want a career where I feel like I’m helping people every day. I can’t see that happening as an artist. Art has always been a staple in my life. My parents were very supportive and took me to all sorts of classes. When I got older, I took every art class my high school offered. Studying art has given me a more creative perspective on life and how I view things. It has taught me to consider things past their first impressions.

Right now I’m working on developing some doodles that I did last semester. I didn’t take an art class last semester, and for the first time in years I found myself having art squirt out in unexpected places. I would draw compulsively over all my notes and create images that were completely unexpected. From these doodles I have created sketches and paintings that I would like to develop into a series. They are kind of an exploration of form. Some are completely nonfigurative. However, some are inspired from bits and pieces of things all meshed together.

This year I really want to learn how to make work consistently. I want to buy/make a sketch book that I can do a little bit in everyday. Sometimes I’m so busy that I forget to take time to sit down, think and create. This is something I want to change.