About myself, and my work
Artist bio
Rabbits, mashed potatoes, unopened letters, and paper airplanes commingle in a meditation on memory, security, and loss. Tania O’Donnell’s work seeks to understand sentiment as it relates to human connectivity in the present and into the past. O’Donnell approaches her work conceptually, using materials ranging from traditional oil on canvas to installation and video. A Philadelphia area artist, she holds a Masters of Arts in Teaching from the University of the Arts where she was recipient of the Sylvia G. Wexler Award for Excellence in Graduate Study. She is a Corzo Center for the Creative Economy Incubator Grant recipient and Wells Fargo Fellow for her work with the Red Barn Arts Center in rural Wellsboro, PA. O’Donnell is currently pursuing her MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Artist and Project Statements
My work takes a variety of forms. My artist statement takes a broad view of my studio practice. Project statements focus on individual series within this large scope.
Artist Statement
I think about how loss sweetens memory and intensifies the future by bringing reality into focus: we lack control over what will happen in any instance and across a lifetime. Cataloguing, mining and reconstructing the artifacts of life is my means of anchoring the present in a more purposeful way - not by casual documentation but by retroactive participation as a reminder that the accumulation of the ordinary can truly be something.
Once, in a Martha Stewart mood, I collected as many glass jars as I could find in flea markets and friends’ basements to line the 10 inch thick wooden beams of the barn at my husbands’ family home. Alone they were uninspiring but once they became a collection I was interested in discovering a bubble in the glass or variations in color among jars I had thought were identical. Through my work I contemplate days which taken alone appear mundane but to me appear beautiful as a lifetime.
I send letters to myself as a reminder of what each day held. The envelope holds the day and like the past the contents are only seen through imagination. I can access them in my mind, making some of the artworks in the envelopes glorious and others silly or sorry just like the events they represent. This is my instrument of time travel. A gift to future letter finders and a way to hold hands with those who have past, and whose letters I read and keep in my bedside table.
It is not the anxiety or sadness that intrigues me about mortality. Moribund moments are rife with subtleties, small shifts, and persistently forgotten ever-present parts of identity that bubble to the surface and hint at truth. This is my investigation. The materiality of exploring this through a collage or a painting or an installation deals in these small finds. A piece of wallpaper that recalls countless cans of coke spilled on a green carpet. A photograph in the bottom of a box that could be an aunt, or an uncle, or a grandparent in infancy. I remember a story someone told that might explain or obscure and I build a visual response to discover what I can’t possibly know.
Once, in a Martha Stewart mood, I collected as many glass jars as I could find in flea markets and friends’ basements to line the 10 inch thick wooden beams of the barn at my husbands’ family home. Alone they were uninspiring but once they became a collection I was interested in discovering a bubble in the glass or variations in color among jars I had thought were identical. Through my work I contemplate days which taken alone appear mundane but to me appear beautiful as a lifetime.
I send letters to myself as a reminder of what each day held. The envelope holds the day and like the past the contents are only seen through imagination. I can access them in my mind, making some of the artworks in the envelopes glorious and others silly or sorry just like the events they represent. This is my instrument of time travel. A gift to future letter finders and a way to hold hands with those who have past, and whose letters I read and keep in my bedside table.
It is not the anxiety or sadness that intrigues me about mortality. Moribund moments are rife with subtleties, small shifts, and persistently forgotten ever-present parts of identity that bubble to the surface and hint at truth. This is my investigation. The materiality of exploring this through a collage or a painting or an installation deals in these small finds. A piece of wallpaper that recalls countless cans of coke spilled on a green carpet. A photograph in the bottom of a box that could be an aunt, or an uncle, or a grandparent in infancy. I remember a story someone told that might explain or obscure and I build a visual response to discover what I can’t possibly know.
10 Boxes to Give You Confidence
Growing up, each year for the holidays my brother would give me one ostensibly insignificant gift that filled a hole I didn’t know existed in me. When I open these presents my mother would be annoyed at the thought that he’d given something so minor, and yet there I was overwhelmed with a sense of wholeness and awed by his unequivocal knowledge of exactly what I lacked.
10 boxes to give you confidence takes a close look at individuals in my past, present, and future. Each wooden box contains something small and specific, intended to create that overwhelming sense of completion for precisely the right person. I know who you are. I know what you are trying to accomplish. I noticed that this was missing. The contents of the boxes are the parts of self that went missing when trying to overcome otherness or lost to personal tragedies both real and imagined. They are made of enduring materials that may be made impermanent if unprotected. Built out of balsa wood, the boxes themselves are topped with a paper note and tied with string. They feel light and fragile indicating the care required when handling precious cargo. Therefore the boxes contain and protect only so well as they themselves are protected. By manifesting and returning these essential qualities which make an individual unique and requiring the recipient to act as safeguard 10 boxes to give you confidence proposes a means of bring to a close insecurities born out of experiences when we are made to recognize our otherness in favor of a celebration of self. |