Studio Visit: Tawnie Silva

[banner made of felt]

[“Road Trip” photographic series]

Studio Visit: Tawnie Silva

What does Tawnie Silva do, he’s got sewing machine, piles of felt and fabric, notions (as one uses in sewing), styrofoam, and all kinds of things made of all those materials. In his studio, Silva is juggling two different things: things he’s already made and paintings on illustration board, similar to Flash cards. His art is full of play yet has a serious pull as well.

He’s already had an exhibition of his circus sideshow banners emblazoned with altruistic or sometimes confounding phrases at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. The banners made with heated press-on cutouts so that it looks like a stencil. Silva however, makes his own patterns, selects his own colors, writes his own text and assembles the entire piece himself.

He has studied commercial figurative illustration, but not clothing construction where flat pieces of material are transformed into three-dimensional objects. With his new direction, he’s taking three-dimensional objects and making them into flat, two-dimensional pieces. This reverse kind of piece is still in process but it can be seen in the banners how such a reverse transformation could take place easily in his hands.

The banners show through color relationships a layered means of created the illusion of depth. Even though the material he uses is felt, a dense, heavy fabric, his handling of the materials is light and deft.

Another interesting process Silva has used is drawing with a single black thread using tweezers to attach the thread to velcro. Creating both figures and text across a narrow panel, Silva has created a tenuous piece of art with a tenuous message about suicide. His handling of materials and text are considered and playful.

“I don’t want to sound cynical; I don’t want to be a pessimist, I want to be an optimist and, hopefully, one day be very altruistic. Reality, well, you’ve got to fight it all the time,” Silva insisted.

Silva has also created three-dimensional blowup figures made from plastic bags like the kind you get from the grocery store. He has expanded those works a bit by creating an oversized rabbit head that he used for a series of photographic image, but they are also pointing toward a new series of photos in which Silva has become his own model. He’s trying to be playful yet kinky and anti-societal… transgressive is what I would say is the goal. Playful yet transgressive… that ain’t easy to do. A lot of the images do achieve that, however.

While Silva’s studio practice is full of non-traditional art making, it is full of interesting ideas and processes. Play is literally mixed with work when you walk through his door.