After seeing Dara Oshin's artwork in several group shows around Brooklyn including the Park Slope/Windsor Artists 2019 group exhibition at Ossam Gallery, The Constructions at Ground Floor Gallery, and the 15th Annual Small Works Show at 440 Gallery, I wanted to check out more of her nature-inspired work and was happy to find an opportunity to visit her studio last weekend.
Dara Oshin's artwork on display in her studio
Dara Oshin's 'Ascension' available at 440 Gallery as part of the 15th Annual Small Works Show
On Saturday, December 7, Oshin invited visitors to her sunny, fourth-floor space at TI Art Studios in Red Hook for a studio sale featuring artwork by her and fellow artists Robin Roi and Mahalia Stines. Originally from New Jersey, Oshin studied English at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania and minored in Studio Art. She discovered her true calling was art and continued taking various art courses, including a two-year stint studying oil painting at a Paris atelier. She painted for more than ten years but after having three kids found that she needed to switch media because of the toxic chemicals in paint.
Dara Oshin's studio at TI Arts Studios
Line Drawings by Dara Oshin
A line drawing by Dara Oshin (courtesy of the artist)
A line drawing by Dara Oshin (courtesy of the artist)
In 2016 she began a series of line drawings. "There was a point in time when there was so much bad news...and I was feeling distressed about it and I wanted to do something to bring love into the world and that showed people connecting and loving one another," Oshin said. "This whole project was about spreading love and good feelings and showing what emotional connections are all about." The uplifting, stark drawings unite the figures by blending their body parts "so it becomes kind of ambiguous where one person ends and the other person begins," she explained. "I try to minimize the amount of lines that you actually need."
Works from Oshin's 'Not A Toy' series
Another earlier series, Not A Toy, consists of small interactive boxes filled with a variety of beads and moving objects that viewers can shake, rattle, and roll inside the wooden containers. "I don’t think I ever would have moved into this mixed media world if I didn’t have to move away from [oil painting] and I’m just loving it. I’m loving having no restraints on what I do," Oshin said. The boxes include everyday objects from Oshin's Windsor Terrace home, such as dryer lint lining the edges of the works, and abstract photos of kitchen items such as plates and pans. "I incorporate a lot of stuff from my domestic life into my work," she explained. One image, which suggests a woman's nether regions, is actually a close up shot of the corner of a baking pan. "I was just playing with the idea of women in the kitchen and, it being a toy, women as objects," she noted.
Dara Oshin, Rising and Falling, 2019 (image courtesy of the artist)
Her photographic Eggs series was conceived in her kitchen. "I was boiling eggs for my son’s lunch every single day, and they would burst, and I started realizing how cool they were. Most of the work is really inspired by my life with my family." she recalled. "You can’t fight trying to separate it, I had to just incorporate it into my work."
"They’re just abstract forms. They don’t have to be an egg," she said of the photos. "They’re just these cool forms that everyone can see in them whatever they want to see." Oshin began photographing the misshapen eggs—many of which could be mistaken for sculpture or otherworldly beings—and soon started incorporating the images into mixed media sculptural works.
Artwork by Dara Oshin
Works by Dara Oshin
Artwork by Dara Oshin
These rustic yet elegant Icons feature images of the distorted eggs on a gilded background embellished with beads and surrounded by twigs, feathers, seed pods, and other natural materials she collects from Prospect Park. Oshin said she gilds the works as a way to "raise nature to a religious level," presenting them "like little altars or reliquaries." She also sews glittering beads onto the images to create a sense of movement and sparkle and to symbolize seeds or Mother Nature.
L-R: Robin Roi and Dara Oshin pose with an elaborate nest they created for a duo show at Ground Floor Gallery in March
"I was feeling really disconnected from nature...and when I started making these I felt very nourished by getting out and constructing them and bringing these pieces of nature into my space and then living with it," she said. Oshin soon discovered that she wanted viewers to interact with the works. "I want people to connect with stuff…pick flowers and stick them in and just continue adding on to them and swapping them out," she insists. "One of the things I like about this series is that it really can be interpreted on a lot of different levels. Some people see completely different things than me and I love that."
To learn more about Dara Oshin, and to see more of her artwork, visit daraoshin.com.
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