Terrance Graven

Terrance Graven is a San Francisco artist whose installations often incorporate sculptural elements, performance art, costumes, sound pieces, and theatrical lighting. He uses unconventional materials such as, bread, blood, mold and bacterial cultures, salt, spoiled milk, medical tubing, fingernails, brightly-colored cough syrups, thick medicinal ointments, gold, cremation ashes, and dead flies.

Life and career

Terrance Graven was born June 3, 1966 and raised in a northwest village in Antwerp, Ohio, as the oldest of three children. In 1984, he studied with an Individualized Major at Indiana University and in 2004 continued his education, culminating in a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Francisco State University (Honors Program and Dual Emphasis: Sculpture and Painting). He also studied privately at Michael Markowitz Art Studios.

In 1990, he was a principal performer for Harupin-Ha, the first Bay Area Butoh troupe, headed by Koichi and Hiroko Tamano. He also trained with Yumiko Yoshioka, Akira Kasai, Anzu Furukawa, Yuri Nagaoka, and Diego Piñon.

In 1992, he formed COLLAPSINGsilence Performance Troupe, which was active for thirteen years. They were a movement-based group, who choreographed all of their original works and collaborated with live musicians such as Sharkbait, Hollow Earth, Haunted by Waters, and Mandible Chatter. The troupe designed and fabricated all costumes, props, puppets, and site-specific installations. In 1996, they were featured at The International Performance Art Festival.

After working as a veterinarian technician for three years, Graven currently supports his art career by working in the film, television, and advertising industry as a production designer, art director, project manager, set builder, prop master, model maker, and fabricator. In advertising, he has worked with large companies such as Nike, Apple Computers, Google, Toyota Motors, Chevron, Geico, and others. He specializes in building miniatures and stop-motion animation and has worked for Skellington Productions, Phantom Investigators, Hatching Beauty, and others.

Exhibitions

In 2009, he exhibited a solo show at David Cunningham Projects Gallery entitled "TEMPVS". According to writer Traci Vogel of the SF Weekly, "In his performance work, Graven visits territory pioneered by the Viennese Actionists and feminist artists such as Carolee Schneeman, who claimed the body as a canvas. There is a fertile aesthetic intersection with Graven's installations, which hew closely to a Victorian Memento Mori ("remember death") sensibility" [1] Terrance Graven states that before the exhibition, he placed an advertisement requesting memento mori donations. He was invited into strangers’ homes wherein they shared personal stories about their deceased loved ones. Afterwards they gave contributions in the form of cremation ashes and other relics. These were placed at the bottom of a sculpture with a rotating tripod.[2]

In 2014, he was chosen to be featured in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' triennial "Bay Area Now 7", which garnered considerable press coverage, including a review by San Francisco Chronicle's Kenneth Baker[3] and the San Francisco Arts Quarterly.[4] Graven created an installation and intervention that directly engaged the museum staff in a series of experimental trust exercises. In one of his undertakings, he met with YBCA's accountant requesting a blank check. With the staff member in attendance, he destroyed the check by repeatedly submerging it in one of the museum's 5 gallon buckets of black paint. All the materials used in the art piece were acquired from the museum on site, which included brass art-hanging-hardware with nails, Durabond joint compound (5 min set), Westpac Fast Set Patching Compound, Fix-It-All, drywall, YBCA hammer, latex paint-covered paper (blank check from YBCA, 24-page printouts of email correspondences between museum and artist to establish trust, photocopy of driver’s license and social security card, photocopy of I-9, and photocopy of W-4), mason line string, labels with thread, numbered gallery pins, striping tape, painter's tape, furniture wrap, plastic drop, paint, graphite, and ink.[5]

He has been a guest lecturer-instructor at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Douglas and Sturgess, Jon Sims Center for the Arts, Yugen Theater, and the Harvey Milk Institute.

He has exhibited in shows at David Cunningham Projects Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, De Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 111 Minna Gallery, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, and others.

Solo Exhibitions

Selected Group and Collaborative Exhibitions

References

  1. ↑ Vogel, Traci (July 15, 2009). "Good Mourning". SFWeekly.
  2. ↑ Graven, Terrance. "Terrance Graven". TEMPVS.
  3. ↑ Baker, Kenneth (July 18, 2014). "Bay Area Now 7 Review". San Francisco Chronicle.
  4. ↑ Lutz, Leora (September 30, 2014). "Bay Area Now 7". SFAQ.
  5. ↑ Graven, Terrance. "Terrance Graven".

External links

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