Summary

Artist Tara Donovan uses commonplace consumer materials--toothpicks, tape, pencils, buttons, paper plates, and the like--to create her dazzling sculptural installations. Often biomorphic or topographical in character, her large-scale abstract works utilize systematic arrangements of thousands or even millions of units. Visually evocative and perceptually seductive, her pieces are at once organic and highly structured. Donovan has been recognized for her commitment to process and her ability to discover how the inherent physical characteristics of an object might allow it to be transformed into art. Published in conjunction with a major solo exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston, this book is the first to document Donovan's complete oeuvre, from her beginnings working in ink to her most recent pieces. Among the many works shown areUntitled (Plastic Cups), a 50-by-60-foot landscape of plastic cups;Haze,a 42-foot-long wall of over two million clear plastic drinking straws stacked like wood; and her three 40-inch cubes, one of steel pins, one of toothpicks, and one of shattered glass. An in-depth conversation between Donovan and Lawrence Weschler traces the artist's schooling, early career, and current work.

Author Biography

Tara Donovan was born in 1969 in New York City. She studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York; Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C.; and Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. She has received solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and numerous museums and galleries. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and London, among other cities nationally and internationally.

Nicholas Baume is chief curator at the ICA, Boston. He has organized exhibitions on the work of Kai Althoff, Kader Attia, Carol Bove, Thomas Hirschhorn, Lucy McKenzie, and Anish Kapoor.

Jen Mergel is assistant curator at the ICA, Boston.

Lawrence Weschler, a staff writer at the New Yorker for over twenty years, is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University and artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival. His books include Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, and the forthcoming True to Life, which encompasses twenty-five years of conversation with David Hockney.

Second Nature	p. 7
Plates	p. 16
Animal, Mineral, Vegetable: The Material Coming to Life. A conversation between Lawrence Weschler and Tara Donovan	p. 138
Biography	p. 156
Afterword	p. 158
Contributors	p. 159
Photography Credits	p. 160
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Excerpts

From: "Animal, Mineral, Vegetable: The Material Coming to Life"
A Conversation between Lawrence Weschler and Tara Donovan

Tara Donovan: So the first toothpick cube I made was about a foot by a foot. It was kind of slumpy and bad, but I realized that if I made it big, it would be heavier and it would work better. Because it wasn't yet dense enough.

Lawrence Weschler: What were you doing in terms of your fantasy of yourself at this point? Were you a waitress who had a hobby of filling balloons with sand and boxes with toothpicks with the idea that some day you'd be discovered for the great artist you were, or were you just some kind of nut?

D: Well, when you put it that way . . .

W: What did your friends think you were?

D: I think my friends did think I was a nut but appreciated my commitment to it. I think, honestly, the only thing I really aspired to at that time was to have just a regional art career. I wasn't trying to be an art star or anything. It was more like, Wouldn't it be neat if I could, you know, get into some shows? That was really my only goal.

W: Anyway, with regard to those toothpicks, you're beginning to figure out that the more of them you get, the more likely the piece will be to work.

D: And I finally got enough, eventually. Because a case of toothpicks isn't that cheap when you're on a waitress's salary.

W: Meanwhile, though, this is fascinating as an early instance of this thing with you where it turns out that x may not be enough, you figure out that you are going to need at least 5x—in other words, that scale makes all the difference. I mean literally, physically: there's something about friction that kicks in. Actually, do you understand what is going on scientifically, why the toothpicks finally do stick together?

D: Truly scientifically? No. But I think friction and gravity and just the sheer density of small interlocking parts is really all it is. I mean, with that piece, when it reaches the thirty-six-inch-square range, it's strong enough even for me to be able to stand on top of it.

W: How long after you started doing the toothpicks did you get it to that thirty-six-inch size?

D: I don't know. I think it took me like a month. Something like that. And then both those pieces—the toothpicks and the sand-filled-balloon wall—were in a regional group show, which was one of my first shows, at Maryland Art Place in Baltimore. I sent in slides and I got included. You're going to love this story because, I'm sure I have it somewhere, but there was a review where my contribution got referred to as “a wall of eggs and a bale of hay.”

No one got it. At all. No one. It was like: aye. So I really felt that I had failed, you know? It was the first time I had ever had occasion to read about myself in the paper, and I really believed that I had failed. I was also kind of pissed off and felt like if someone was reading it incorrectly, then I hadn't done my job. It was my first lesson about context.

So it wasn't until much later that I remade the toothpick piece and showed it on its own, in all its glory. Because that piece on its own in a huge room is—it's really something.

Excerpted from Tara Donovan by Tara Donovan
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.