Getting Away with It: An Artist's Blog about Art: Living in a Material World.

As the art world’s true “material girl,” Tara Donovan makes it onto my blog with her wacky, witty, and incredibly fascinating sculptures. As a young graduate student in 1987, Donovan bused tables for a living. She took to employing everyday items such as drinking straws, paper cups, and plates to make monumental sculptures and, as a beginner, ordered her toothpicks by the box from the restaurant she worked at.

Close-up of Elmer's Glue sculpture (Strata, 2001-2002)

Some years later, she lives in New York and works out a 7,000 square foot studio located conveniently next to her home. Some would call her works true manifestations of OCD. Many of Donovan’s projects involve her locking herself in studio to work on these sculptures with nothing but white-washed walls to keep her company. She confessed to TIME Magazine that she likes to keep her work and her home life separate, although she designed them to coexist.

Donovan has been working on sculptures for years now. One of her most famous includes a life-size abstract design of scotch tape intricately wound around it to create a balance of reflective light and color. “I’m constantly looking for this phenomenological effect,” she says of the work. Donovan also mentioned her skill with extreme multitasking, something which aids in raising her twin one-year-old boys and running an art studio.