donna anderson kam

Datelines
Solo Exhibition
Chandra Cerrito Contemporary
Oakland California,
October 5 - November 29 2012

Artist Talk moderated by
Jessica Brier

Chandra Cerrito,
interviewed by Lucy Kasofsky for SFAQ,  October 2012

It's always fun to show someone whose work strikes you. Donna's work is very large scale pastel drawings on paper. What she's doing is inspired by reading different news articles, often it's a tragic experience, like a drug overdose or a drive-by shooting, or somebody lost in the woods. That's what the news is - it's usually playing off the tragedy. She collects these news articles, and works with actors, she'll give them a rough idea of the scene that she imagines and then they act it out. They have freedom of how to act it out, then she takes photographs of them while they're acting, and with those photographs she starts manipulating the images and intensifying the colors to hint at the passion and the intensity of the moment. She ends up drawing these beautiful drawings on large white backgrounds with a lot of negative space. These characters, usually young women, are in these disturbing situations, and yet they're not sensationalized at all. There's ambiguity as to what's happening, so there's something very under-your-skin about it, there's something disturbing, but you're not quite sure why.