Tara Donovan

Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue/ACE GALLERY

I love it when an artist creates work by collecting something usually taken for granted and turning it into an absolute thing of beauty. So is the case of artist Tara Donovan, the Brooklyn artist and winner of the MacArthur genius grant.  

Toothpicks/ACE GALLERY

Using everyday materials, Donovan creates mystifying sculptures and site-specific installations. Some of her pieces involve hours of labor and a team of work. She must be in love with the process, creating something so completely tedious, an OCD-ers dream even! Read this great interview at The Design Observer Group! Then watch this art:21 discussion.

"Nebulous" Scotch Tape/ACE GALLERY

Her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 2001. She won the Calder Prize in 2005. In 2006 she had her first solo exhibit at the Pace Gallery (who currently represents her). She had a well received solo show last February at the Pace Gallery, of her Pin Drawings. And she's shown many other places; including but not limited to; the Met, Cleveland Contemporary Art Museum, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, at BAM UC Berkeley and the Institute of Contemporary Art/ Boston.

Pins/NY TIMES

Tara Donovan, I've got my eye on you! I can't wait to see what you come up with next. In the mean time, I'll be picking up this lovely book made in conjunction with your solo exhibit at the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston.

Paper Plates/ACE GALLERY

Buttons/ACE GALLERY

!!!
 

Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg is a British born artist who rose to fame during the 1980s with his recycled object installations. His use of shape and color is careful yet humorous. From across the room his sculptures appear to be simple shapes, but up close they are small communities of found objects: metal intermingling with plastic, a broken hanger, a cracked plastic plate, a miniature army man. Cragg won the Turner Prize in 1988.

Candy Jernigan "Collection Artist"

I've always liked to refer to Candy Jernigan as a “Collection Artist.” I just like the way it sounds. I was exposed to her work about 10 years ago, when a friends dad loaned me her book “Evidence.” By that time she'd been dead 10 years. She was a little known artist during her life, popular in the avant garde scene in Manhattan. She obsessively chronicled her life in scrapbooks, collecting any and all bits of her existence-ranging from subway tickets, package wrappers, soda pop tabs, to food smears, road kill, and drug viles. Nothing was off limits. She found beauty everywhere. I've read someone likening her work to a forensic pathologist. After contracting liver cancer she died at the young age of 39. At the time of her death she was married to Phil Glass. Two books of her work are available the aforementioned “Evidence” and “The Dead Bug Box.” 

Jernigan’s amazing ability to turn trash into artistic treasure with accents of beauty and humor became over time her signature way of creating.

 According to fellow artist Chuck Close, in a foreword of "Evidence: the Art of Candy Jernigan," "[Candy] took the old saying ‘Art history is to art what ornithology is to birds’ and stood it on its head. This is what Candy had to say about “Evidence:” “In 1980, as I set out on my first trip to Europe, I decided to make a book that would contain any and all physical proof that I had been there: ticket stubs, postcards, restaurant receipts, airplane and bus and railroad ephemera. On successive trips, these collections grew to include food smears, hotel keys, found litter, local news, pop tops, rocks, weather notations, leaves, bags of dirt--anything that would add information about a moment or a place, so that the viewer could make a new picture from the remnants. Objects emerged for me as ‘icons’ for particular cities and these objects became the material for EVIDENCE.” 

Ken Tisa, a friend and fellow artist, offered this comment in the book, "Everyone who wants to see art in New York looks up. Candy looked down."

She was defiantly an inspiration to me as an artist. Over the years I have felt her presence in my work. I would repeatedly check out "Evidence" from the Berkeley Library. One piece of hers that really struck me was her collection of dope vials that she found during a 16 day period around her neighborhood.

In 2004 I paid homage to Candy by creating a similar piece of weed bags I found around on my walk to the BART in Oakland. It ended up in a show at the Fake Cake Gallery. And like Candy's piece I included details as to when and where I found each bag. 

Candy Jernigan's work is magical.