Tara Donovan | Prints and Sculpture

Tara Donovan builds large, labor-intensive, and site-specific installations out of everyday materials such as scotch tape, drinking straws, paper plates, roofing paper and Styrofoam cups. Donovan takes these materials and "grows" them through accumulation. The results are large-scale abstract floor and wall works suggestive of landscapes, clouds, cellular structures and even mold or fungus. In her words, "it is not like I'm trying to simulate nature. It's more of a mimicking of the way of nature, the way things actually grow."

Prints

When printing her etchings, Tara Donovan wanted to approximate the techniques she uses in her own studio to create her large scale unique pieces. Ferric chloride solution, an etching corrosive, was combined with liquid bubble soap. Tara used a straw to blow air into this mixture making different size bubbles that she carefully picked up with a plastic spoon and laid on the aquatinted plates. The bubbles were left on the plates until they popped or dissolved, allowing the ferric chloride to etch the surface of the plate.

When Tara completed the process of applying bubbles to each plate, the acid residue and rosin were cleaned off the plate and then printed. The variety of dark to light bubble images was achieved by controlling the saturation of liquid in each bubble. Each edition was made by printing each plate twice. First in a light blue and then printing slightly off register in black to create the illusion that the bubbles are floating off the paper.
- Pace Prints


UNTITLED, 2009
Relief print from pin matrix
31.75 x 31.75 inches
Edition of 30
$9,400 framed ($9,000 unframed)


UNTITLED, 2009
Relief print from pin matrix
31.75 x 31.75 inches
Edition of 30
$9,400 framed



UNTITLED, 2007
Relief printfrom rubber band matrix
39 x 31 inches
Edition of 58
$8,900



UNTITLED, 2006
38.5 x 26 inches
Printed from rubber bands
Edition of 35
$10,400



UNTITLED, 2005
Etching 32 x 32 inches
Image area: 29.5 x 29.75 inches
Edition of 35
$9,400 framed

UNTITLED, 2004
Etching 18 x 18 inches
Image area: 16 x 16 inches
Edition of 25
$5,200 framed





UNTITLED I-V, 2004
Etchings 14 x 14 inches each
Image area: 12 x 12 inches
Edition of 23
$20,000.