“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.”
—Tara Donovan
Tara Donovan’s Untitled, like much of her work, investigates the physical properties of modest, mass-produced materials. Here, Donovan focuses on the pin, an object that reappears across her multi-media oeuvre, including in her accumulation sculptures that transform quotidian objects like drinking straws, toothpicks, tarpaper, tape, buttons, paper plates, and pencils. In her relief prints, the artist implements the same techniques of accumulation to create organic abstractions. Her pin matrix relief prints were created by placing a piece of foam core over a thin metal plate. The artist then pushed straight pins in the foam core to create the matrix, resulting in thousands of pinheads sticking up slightly from the foam core. A large roller is then used to ink the tops of the pins, and the plate is then placed in a hydraulic press to make an impression, which creates the final image. The resulting image of this technique in the present print is one that suggests organic growth, like spores blossoming in a petri dish, the surface retaining a noticeable tactility from where the pinheads have embossed the paper.
