Travis Townsend,
born in Pennsylvania in 1973, earned a Bachelor of Science
degree from Kutztown University (PA) in 1996, and a Master
of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University
(Richmond, VA) in 2000. Townsend has recently presented solo
exhibitions at the Weston Gallery (Cincinnati) and the New
Arts Program (Kutztown, PA), and has been included in group
exhibitions at Rosenfeld Gallery (Philadelphia); Manifest
Gallery (Cincinnati); Kendall College (Grand Rapids, MI);
Spaces Gallery (Cleveland); Lehigh University (PA); Ann Tower
Gallery (Lexington); Zone: Chelsea (New York); and SECCA (NC).
His paintings have been published in New American Paintings
and the Manifest National Drawing Annual. He was the recipient
of an Emerging Artist Grant from the American Craft Council
(New York) in 2001, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the
Kentucky Arts Council in 2004, sculpture awards from the Virginia
A. Groot Foundation in 2006 and 2008, and a Young Sculptors
Award from Miami University in 2007. He has participated in
artist residencies at Peters Valley Craft Center (NJ); Vermont
Studio Center in 1998; Penland School of Crafts (NC) in 2001;
and the Emma Lake Collaboration (Saskatchewan, Canada) in
2002. Since 2002, he has taught at Eastern Kentucky University
(Richmond, KY) and has been a visiting artist and instructor
at many other institutions. Townsend currently lives and maintains
a studio in Lexington, KY.
Sculpture
Using a mixture of reclaimed building materials, art student's
wood scraps, and other hardware store materials, Renovated
Flightless Devices are idiosyncratic sculptures that play
off the forms and functions of tools, toys, and military equipment.
These process-oriented works take a winding path to completion,
evolving from continuously redrawn sketches and traveling
through many transformations before being cut apart, reassembled,
and reworked. Parts are often transplanted, left behind, or
recycled. Through this method of construction and reconstruction,
I am able to intuitively build and then, at a later time,
make necessary changes.
Embracing the unplanned,
these oddly familiar, nearly useful-looking sculptures are
imbued with human characteristics and gestures. Curious inspection
and patient observation reveal previously unseen drawings
and room-like interiors. These things have handles, openings,
drawn symbols, and moveable parts, but like the mystery of
a ritual object from a broken-down culture, the physical or
metaphorical functions are left to the imagination.
In an increasingly commercialized,
fast-paced, displaced society, I am attempting to build slow,
clumsy objects that reveal a layered history.
Paintings
I am constantly drawing, and these process-oriented acrylic
and mixed media on wood paintings evolve from my abundant
collections of sketched-on scraps of paper and wood. Created
through the accumulation of many marks and layers of paint,
they are often glued together, sawed into smaller compositions,
cut apart, reoriented, sanded, scraped, and repainted. It
is often difficult to know exactly when a work is complete,
but I try to make each painting evolve in a different way
than the one that came before it by finding the right balance
between clarity and disintegration.
Through this balance of
process, form, and material, I want each work to exhibit a
kind of awkward familiarity. The paintings are both blobby
diagrams of daily processes and epic abstractions of past
art. They are also informed by such non-art drawings as carved
initials in trees, phone conversation doodles, and the walls
of a well-lived-in house. This daily record of mark making
fascinates me, for it is an indication of the overwhelming
need to leave a visible record of our existence.
Travis Townsend, 2008
For more information
on TRAVIS TOWNSEND, please visit the artist's
personal site
Travis Townsend's work
may also be seen by visiting:
http://www.virginiaagrootfoundation.org/artists
http://www.vcu.edu/arts/craft/dept/clay/gallery.shtml?album=68
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