Exploring instability & change in a range of materials.
Biography
A born and raised Minnesotan living in Pennsylvania, Danielle Callahan appreciates adaptability. She earned a BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus, with a concentration in painting and drawing. Playing with varied materials and modes of making is innate to her, deeply informed and buoyed by decades caring for infants and toddlers. Years after graduation, Callahan made a foray into glass sculpture, then segued to wood fired ceramics thanks to a Jerome Foundation / St. John’s Pottery Fellowship. Danielle recently completed the ABCC, a contemporary conceptual ceramics program, created by A-B Projects.
Process appreciative sculptures, paintings & prints.
Curator & longtime friend Allyson Evans observes, “Danielle’s work with clay is rhythmic and simple, not fussy…(she) works with what happens, making purpose out of mishap in a beautiful way.”
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Artist Statement
My work addresses this life of corporeality with confusion, appreciation, and frustration. I voraciously study how things hold together and fall apart. How I’m held together and fall apart. Aging, weathering, time, place and impermanence are primary tools of my practice. I break, keep, wrap, alter, revisit and generally allow my work to change and be unstable.
Unfired clay feels especially apt to use when questioning the vulnerable or unpredictable, but I still find wood firing ceramics compelling. Lumen prints (expired photo paper exposed varying lengths of time outside) currently intrigue me as documents to expand. I often utilize materials in my immediate environment -bricks, sticks, nails, wire, sidewalk cracks, rocks, tree bark or tape. Fabric of my own or loved ones also appears in some work…I paint, scrawl, poke, drag, tear and draw lines that both connect and separate. Resultant cuts and gouges can read simultaneously scary and beautiful. A lot of work consists of a few quick gestures or a single impression, while other pieces evolve over the course of years. Expressions of repair, stress, mending, radiation, wonder - art is my expansive reservoir.
Work reflecting time & place.
