Using everyday utilitarian materials such as Styrofoam cups, hot glue, straws and scotch tape, artist Tara Donovan creates sculptures that suggest molecular forms, clouds or even abstract landscapes. Donovan uses the innate transparent properties found in the materials, coupled with light, to articulate the space and structure of her sculptures. Donovan’s work also suggests a dependence on the environment it occupies, which affects qualities such as the scale, mass and overall orientation of each piece. Donovan is a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University (1991) and has since exhibited in galleries and museums nationwide. Exhibitions include works at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2004). In the same year, the artist exhibited with the UCLA Hammer Museum; view writings on that exhibition here. She also was the 2005 recipient of the Alexander Calder Foundation‘s first annual Calder Prize and, in 2006, was granted an artist residency with the Atelier Calder in Sache, France. On Jan. 5, the New York Times reviewed the exhibition “Constructed Abstractions,” which is on view now at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, featuring Donovan and five other artists.