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, concentrating in painting and drawing. Her approach via play with varied modes of making and materials is innate, but also deeply informed by decades caring for infants and toddlers. Post graduation, Callahan made a foray into glass sculpture, then segued to wood fired ceramics thanks to a Jerome Foundation and St. John’s Pottery Fellowship. Danielle recently completed a contemporary conceptual ceramics certificate program, the ABCC, 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.”
Artist Statement
My work addresses this life of corporeality with appreciation, confusion and frustration. I voraciously study how things hold together and fall apart. How I’m held together and fall apart. Time, place and impermanence are primary tools of my practice.
I break, keep, wrap, revisit, alter and allow my work to change and be unstable.
Unfired clay feels especially apt when questioning vulnerability, but I do still fire. Lumen prints currently intrigue me. The directness of photo paper exposed to sunlight (no camera needed) contributes a particular sense of joy and mystery to my making. I’m enthralled by perspectives the process encourages. Materials in my immediate environment -bricks, sticks, nails, wire, rocks, bark, tape, cracks -are utilized often. Personal items like worn fabric remnants are incorporated sometimes, too. I paint, scrawl, poke, tear, drag and draw lines that both connect and separate. Cuts and gouges often read simultaneously scary and beautiful. Some pieces are made quickly, (a single impression or a few gestural marks), others evolve over the course of years. Evidence of stress, heat/radiation, weathering, transform into expressions of a temporary reality, repair or wonder. Art is my expansive reservoir.
Work reflecting time & place.
