Project 1: Process
ARTIST RESEARCH

Kristin Seymour
Artist Research Tara Donovan

            Most people never take the time to look closely at the common goods that surround us and are a big part of our lives. Tara Donovan sets out to “explores the material qualities of everyday mass-produced objects” with the goal of creating large-scale art installations consisting of thousands or millions of the same common item (McTighe). She “is known for her novel use of ordinary materials and objects like pins, electrical cords and paper plates” (Winston). Her sculptures “are made from multiples of a single mass-produced object or material” (Esplund).  Donovan uses items that normal people overlook and never choose to explore their physical properties closer.
                                    
     Haze, 2003, Plastic Straws

Lance Explund of the Wall Street Journal titles Donovan “a magician of the mundane”, continuing to make remarks about how Donovan “turns the adage of ‘less is more’” into “more of less is more” (Explund). Haze (2003) was created by stacking millions of clear plastic straws on top of one another. From a distance the white semi-opaque wall is seen, appearing to move with your movements and casting shadows in places making it look like an inverted landscape, but once you are close it changes and the ‘ah-ha’ moment happens and you realize it is made of plastic straws. Haze stretched over 42 feet long and over 12 feet high, occupying an entire wall with two sidewalls holding the straws in place with the help of gravity. In pieces like this one and others of Donovan’s she has a rule to follow. Donovan explains “I have a system, I have specific rules for myself” (Wei). Her main rule is to never alter the nature of the materials she chooses. Donovan explains in an interview with Oriane Stender “My investigations with materials address a specific trait that is unique to each material” (Stender). Her goal is to work with a material until it transcends itself (Kino). She succeeds in making the familiar, become strange.
                                          
                                    Untitled, 2003, Styrofoam cups and hot glue
                                   
Beyond the conceptual and physical need for the material qualities in Donovan’s work, in all interviews and articles about her it is clear that the importance labor and repetition is needed to create each piece. “With every new material comes a specific repetitive action that builds the work” (Stender). Haze took “the artist and six assistants 18 nonstop days to install” (Wei). Before installing a work, she experiments with many different materials in her studio. She tries to find the perfect materials that can be manipulated in ways that are unique to the material’s physical qualities. Another more recent conceptual focus of Donovan’s is transparency and the interaction with light that her pieces can create. In her Untitled work of 2003 she created a ceiling hung piece out of Styrofoam cups. The piece was places over a skylight, and hovered like a cloud above the room. Each cup became a miniature lampshade, diffusing the natural light around the room while creating ever-changing shadows and highlights in the structure (Brewer). In an interview with the Louisiana Channel, Donovan explained how she is interested in transparent materials because it allows light to not only reflect, but also pass through her work in interesting ways. She also explained how she likes what happens when you’re between the sculpture and the light; it activates the sculpture (Louisiana). Relying heavily on seen and unseen forces of nature (gravity, inertia, light, friction etc.), as well as the unique organic forms that her work takes on, makes viewers think that Donovan’s work is commenting on nature and its characteristics. She states in most all articles that she is not referencing nature directly, but rather she is mimicking the ways of nature, the way things grow and move (Brewer).
                                          
         Toothpicks, 2001, Toothpicks
                                      
The interaction with light as well as the pure size and organic shapes of her work convinces you to walk around and view them from many different angles. Whether the final structure is a cube like in Toothpicks (2001) or Haze (2003) along with many other works, you are drawn in to the materials. As whole installation and from far away the works take on an organic shape that can be compared to mountain ranges, molecular structures and waves. Due to human nature and the method of Donovan’s presentation, we are enticed to move in and examine the pieces closer. Upon closer inspection, the commonplace materials are recognized, the ‘ah-ha’ moment has happened and viewers begin to wonder how she made it or how it is all held together. Viewers can then begin to think more deeply about qualities of straws, cups or paper plates. Stender compared Donovan to Sol Lewitt in the sense of their common use for rules in their artwork. This is a very noteworthy comparison because unlike Sol Lewitt who left all the physical art making up to assistants/the public, Donovan is involved directly in the construction of her work. She creates rules for constructing the work and a method (Stender).
Although her work is often considered “site- specific”, she likes to consider her work “site-responsive”. She builds the work for the first time fully in the space itself. For works such as Haze and Untitled (2003) the architecture itself determined the shape. The architecture is also an important element in holding up the straws of Haze as well as providing the light in Untitled (2003). Her works are not site specific because they can be “adapted to any space that has the appropriate architectural format” (Stender). The tedious work it took to stack all the straws in Haze (2003) or gluing together the thousands of Styrofoam cups in Untitled (2003) or even the meticulous placing of toothpicks into a cube shape for Toothpicks (2001) shows the labor rigor, assistance needed, time intensive work it took to put these pieces together. Conceptually Donovan is focusing on the pure physical elements of each material. By comparison you can see how she explored the ability to stack and use gravity to hold together the straws for Haze. In Untitled (2003) it is clear how the angles of the sides of the Styrofoam cups helped lead to the angles of the work rolling across the ceiling.     
                                         
Donovan’s work focuses on the physical qualities of mass-produced objects as well as the labor and rules needed to create the work. Viewers are asking questions about how it is made, what it is made out of and are in complete awe at how materials they can relate to can create such huge, and compelling works of art.

Works Cited
Brewer, Paul. "Tara Donovan - Exhibitions - Hammer Museum." Tara Donovan - Exhibitions - Hammer Museum. Hammer Museum, 23 May 2004. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. <http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/81>.
Donvoan, Tara. "Sculpting Everyday Materials." Speech. 29 Jan. 2014. Louisiana Channel. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. <http://channel.louisiana.dk/video/tara-donovan-sculpting-everyday-materials>.
Esplund, Lance. "Art: Magician of Man-Made Materials." The Wall Street Journal [New York] 24 Dec. 2008, Leisure & Arta sec.: n. pag. Print.
Kino, Carol. "The Genius of Little Things." The New York Times 23 Sept. 2008: n. pag. Print.
Stender, Oriane. "Artnet Magazine." Artnet Magazine. Artnet, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. <http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/stender/stender4-3-06_detail.asp?picnum=3>.
McTighe, Monica. "Tara Donovan." Art Papers Magazine 33.1 (2009): 51. Art & Architecture             Complete. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
Wei, Lily. "Materialist." Art In America 91.10 (2003): 100. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 30 Jan.            2014.
Winston, Helena. "Tara Donovan." Artus 14 (2006): 55. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30             Jan. 2014.

Images
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/stender/stender4-3-06.asp

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Kristin Seymour
Artist Research Tom Friedman

            Tom Friedman is often referred to as a modern artist with a “science nerd” side. He has many concepts in his work including, but not limited to: repetition, procedure, time, hands of the artist being shown, permanence and modernity. Although, not often referred to as a Process Artist in articles, his physical work as well as his development of the work often fall into the categories of process art and process artist. Friedman has been compared to and has made works similar to Tara Donovan’s pieces made from industrial mundane objects as well as Sol Lewitt’s rule following.
 T. J. Morris from ArtsEditor applauded Friedman on being able to balance craft versus concept, he “seems to be able to dance effortlessly around the two, producing artwork that is visually intriguing as well as rich with underlying commentary” (Morris) Although not a new artist, Friedman does a sufficient job of “creating artworks that were aesthetically pleasing as well as conceptually founded and culturally relevant (Morris). Friedman can be compared to Sol Lewitt in the context of creating rules and procedures. He creates a system for some of his works follows “it until the work is done”. As Friedman said in an article by Artforum: “When I make something… I want to build it from the atom up” (Frankel). Like many other process artists, he also references minimalists by the use of the cube. Contradictory to the minimalists, Friedman made his cube works from everyday items such as sugar cubes and packing peanuts see Figure 1. Friedman is also a Process artist because of his obsession with repetition and labor. Friedman stated in an article by Frieze Magazine: “The idea of pulling things further and further apart is interesting” (McEwen). He created a piece that was a piece of gum stretched very thinly from floor to ceiling. This work as well as his Untitled, 1994 Aspirin (Figure 2), which was a self portrait carved into an aspirin pill, both show the repetitive labor in his work (McEwen). Friedman’s intentions are to make-work for specific Galleries. In a video created by the Stephen Friedman Gallery, he explained that he will make-work specific to a space or exhibition while in the gallery itself. Friedman’s Untitled, Twisted Wire, 2012 was created for the Stephen Friedman gallery specifically.  He created this piece by pulling wire off the spool and mangling it and hanging it at certain heights to fill the space in a way that a crowd could be seen in the silhouetted wirework  (Figure 3). Friedman’s work is very modernist as well as having traces of process art character. His intentions may not always seem clear but it is evident that the way in which he creates some of his work and the final presentations of the work, lead down the process art path.
                                   
Figure1. Tom Friedman, Untitled, 2002, Packing Peanuts A cube made by gluing together pink packing peanuts

Figure 2. Tom Friedman, Untitled, 1994 Asprin  A Self Portrait Carved from an Asprin

Figure 3. Tom Friedman, Untitled, Twisted Wire, 2012

Diving more specifically into how Tom Friedman is a process artist, I begin with the characteristics of his titles. Friedman titles most of his work: Untitled. Yet then the way in which it was create and or the materials it is made form is in the sub title (what goes in the wall text). For example, all three of the Figures shown previously show this quality. Figure 1. Even has the process of creation: “made by gluing together pink packing peanuts”. The use of these clear descriptions hints at process art, which typically consists of work heavily reliant on materials and construction of the work as part of the content (McEwen). Friedman’s work also exemplifies time, not only in the construction of the works, labor; time needed to create, but also in the conceptual choice to use materials recycled. Recycled materials show time as a conceptual basis because they are items from the past being used again. Re-appropriated items working in the present time as an art piece is a common process art form way of thinking and making. “A continual procedure of recycling lies at the core of many of Friedman’s works, a circuit of exchange in which the left over remnant of one work provides the building blocks to generate another” (Applin). Jo Applin of Art Journal stated that Friedman’s work “is related to the past as much as the present”. Applin also brings up the classification of Friedman’s work as “bricolage”. This is an art form related with do it yourself strategies. “I argue that Friedman’s process of making and making do, draws on the twin strategies of bricolage” (Applin).  Friedman also used natural phenomenon to power his work, also common to process artists. In Untitled (Gravity), 2012 Friedman used the power of gravity to make his work complete. He formed a latex mold of his head and poured in the plaster. Then left it to sit on the ground and give in to the forces of gravity. The end result is a squashed head of plaster on the floor of the gallery (Figure 4). He also commented on an un-showed work during a video interview with the CAM Honors St. Louis, this piece was a figure created by adding more material each day to create the body. It was a material aesthetically similar to caulking, he showed how each day when he came into his studio, he would add a layer and allow it to dry until the next day.                                             
Figure 4. Tom Friedman Untitled (Gravity), 2012

Friedman’s work clearly exemplifies methods of process are in appearance and in method of formation and creation.  Looking at each of the four figures presented many process art oriented aesthetic things can be seen. The forces of nature such as gravity, mundane and everyday materials used, labor-intensive designs, and the hand of the artist is clearly seen. These are all characteristics of process art and Friedman shows them.            

Works Cited
Applin, Jo. "Bric-a-Brac: The Everyday Work of Tom Friedman." ArtJournal (2008): 69-81.               Luhring Augustine, 30 Oct. 2012. Web. 2             Feb. 2014. <http://prod-images.exhibit-   e.com/www_luhringaugustine_com/ArtJournalSpring2008.pdf>.

"CAM Honors St. Louis Artist Tom Friedman." YouTube. Contemporary Art Museum St.          Louis, 15 Apr. 2011. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.             <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5nyczHy0ns>.

Frankel, David. "X-acto Science: David Frankel on Tom Friedman." Artforum (2000): 139-   40. Luhring Augustine, 30 Oct. 2012. Web. 4 Feb. 2014. <http://prod-images.exhibit-                       e.com/www_luhringaugustine_com/Artforum_Summer2000.pdf>.

Huff, T.J. "ArtsEditor: Features: Daily Impermanence." ArtsEditor: Features: Daily       Impermanence. ArtsEditor, 01 Feb. 2004. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.             <http://www.artseditor.com/html/features/0204_friedman.shtml>.

McEwen, Adam. "Frieze Magazine | Archive | Some Assembly Required." Frieze Magazine |   Archive | Some Assembly Required.   Frieze Magazine, 09 Sept. 2009. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. <http://www.frieze.com/issue/print_article/some_assembly_requir    ed/>.

"Tom Friedman at Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2012." YouTube.             YouTube, 30 Oct. 2012.        Web. 7 Feb. 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bst33cbJBfs>.