Visiting Artist Series Lecture: Christine Tarkowski

Christine Tarkowski is an artist working in a variety of mediums, formats and collaborative conditions. Her artistic output includes; sculpture, architecture, printed matter, photography and song and ranges in scale from the ordinary to the monumental. Equally variable is the scope of production, incorporating the making of permanent public structures, propositional drawings, cast glass models, textile yardage, temporary printed ephemera, and musical choirs. Many of her works point toward the flotsam of western culture relative to systems of democracy, religion and capitalism. Those systems often intersect with or concern themes of conversion, salvation, and belief and are malleable systems relative to a believer’s desires. Recent works are in pursuit of the abstract, drawing on history, craft tectonics, and archetypes. She employs methods of dimensional abstraction to evolve narrative elements that refer to dissolution of order through employing alchemical processes.

IMAGE: Christine Tarkowski, Entanglement in 2 Parts, glass (sculpted, cast, blown), steel, iron. Private commission produced with the assistance of the glass gaffers at Firebird Community Arts in Chicago, 15’w x 32’l x 14’h.