WATER MILL, NY.- Three new works created from Slinky®s by American artist Tara Donovan, known for her ability to transform mass-produced goods into large-scale works of art, are presented as part of Platform, the Parrish Art Museum’s exhibition series that invites artists to respond to the architecture, context, and environmental conditions of the Museum, on view from July 4 through October 12, 2015.

“Tara Donovan’s approach to material is like no other artist’s,” says Andrea Grover, the Century Arts Foundation Curator of Special Projects at the Parrish Art Museum, who organized the exhibition. “Her vision and sense of play allows her to transform the most mundane objects into breathtaking installations.”

For Platform: Tara Donovan, the artist uses thousands of Slinky®s—the familiar children’s toy made from coiled steel, and recognized as the worm-like spring that “walks” down stairs and flows from palm-to-palm with rippling, lifelike movement—to create three new works that are integrated into the public spaces and permanent collection galleries throughout the Museum. The works, all Untitled, 2015, assume a generative, organic appearance despite being made from a mass manufactured material.

The first work, a wall piece installed in the Norman and Liliane Peck/The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Lobby, is composed of thousands of Slinky®s that have been taken apart, reformed, and soldered together for a sprawling wall drawing that reaches from floor to ceiling and traverses across the corner of the room. Like so many of Donovan’s works, this “drawing in space” neatly interacts with the existing architecture, natural light, and view, altering one’s experience of this public space.

Further along in the permanent collection galleries are two additional works by Donovan. Installed in the Drawings by Sculptors exhibition is Donovan’s large scale monoprint made by using modified Slinky®s as a stencil, and in the Material World gallery is the artist’s towering sculpture made from hundreds of the coiled toys. Peppered throughout the Museum, Donovan’s Platform exhibition inserts the artist’s way of thinking and creating into the existing logic of the building and its collection, giving viewers a new way to see and experience the Museum.

Tara Donovan (b. 1969, New York) earned the American Academy of Arts and Letters Willard L. Metcalf Award (2004); National Academy Museum, Helen Foster Barnett Prize (2004); Women’s Caucus for Art, Presidential Award (2004); the first annual Calder Prize (2005); and the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award (2008). Exhibitions of Donovan’s work include the 2008–09 solo exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, traveled to the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati; Des Moines Art Center; and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Her 2007 solo exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art was the fourth in the institution’s series dedicated to contemporary artists. Mounted in November 2007, the exhibition was extended by five months. In 2013 the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, mounted the artist’s first European survey exhibition, which travelled to the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, Germany. Donovan has also had solo exhibitions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (2010); Milwaukee Art Museum (2012). In 2015, she will present monumental works at Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, and the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY, as part of its Platform series. Donovan was also included in the Whitney Biennial in 2000.

Donovan’s work is held in numerous important public and private collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Saint Louis Art Museum; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

Tara Donovan received a B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C., in 1991 and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, in 1999. She lives and works in New York.