Featured Artist Tara Gianinni

Tara Gianinni, Midnight Recollection, 2007, Taxidermied Beetles, spraypaint, latex, glitter, oil and acrylic paint on panel, 12 x 8.5 x 2.5 inches

WordPress appears to have eaten up the Featured Artist post I wrote last night, a bell or whistle (we’re not sure which) to this software I can’t say I love. If you had read the original post, you would know that Tara Gianinni participated in last year’s Emerging Artist Series and that I liked her work so much that I chose to highlight it again, this time in our masthead. You would have learned a bunch of other stuff too, but rather than continue the use of an irritating writing device, I think I’ll just recast the three or so sentences I lost on the subject of the artist’s studio practice.

Most important in those now gone words, is the seemingly mundane observation that Gianinni has been working much smaller this year, and incorporating less taxidermy (though it is clearly still in use). The artist tells me this practice is a direct result of having to spend a lot of time dealing with the limitations of a rat friendly studio, an anecdote (if you can call it that) I mention because it provides a powerful example of how dramatically an artist’s work space can effect the their art. I hate to be sentimental, but I love it when life’s residue shapes art.

Visit Tara Gianinni’s featured artist page.

Tara Gianinni, In the Grotto, 2007, Taxidermied field mouse, taxidermied butterfly,
shells, glitter, dirt, spraypaint and acrylic paint on panel, 17 x 10 x 3 inches