Tara Donovan’s process-driven work explores how materials behave, as she re-imagines the potential of everyday things. Her sculptures and large-scale installations build on the malleability of her chosen materials, amassing mundane objects such as plastic straws, Styrofoam cups, straight pins, rubber bands, and index cards into transcendent forms. Her work is typically untitled, but even in its open interpretation suggests a biomimicry of organic form and pattern.

In her first residency at Tamarind Institute, Donovan continued her exploration of printmaking, defying traditional techniques to create matrixes of astonishing simplicity and beauty. Tamarind Master Printer Valpuri Remling and Apprentice Printer Candice Corgan worked with Donovan to create a matrix constructed entirely of 3 x 5 index cards. She assembled the cards in a wooden structure, and then the overall construction was photographed from above. The photographic image was exposed to an aluminum plate, with the contrast adjusted to allow for the intricacies of the paper-thin edges to read as positive space. The simplicity of the one-color print is in keeping with Donovan’s larger body of work, in which the transformative properties of ordinary materials are realized through repetition and elegant formal sequencing. 

Donovan has been the recipient of many awards and prizes, including the Alexander Calder Foundation’s first annual Calder Prize in 2005, and the MacArthur Fellowship in 2008. She participated in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, and her works have been exhibited at Pace Gallery in New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and many others.