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Stephen Talasnik
Born	(1954-11-21) November 21, 1954 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Occupation(s)	Sculptor, artist, educator
Website	stephentalasnik.com

Stephen Talasnik (born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 21, 1954) is a sculptor and artist (he says he would prefer inventor or engineer), based in New York City, who "creates dense, mesmerizing works in two and three dimensions." His drawings and sculpture are in major international collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago; the Albertina, Vienna; the British Museum, London; the Brooklyn Museum; the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; the Harvard Art Museums at Harvard University, Boston; the Kupferestichkabinett Sammlung der Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik, Berlin; the New School, New York City; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Talasnik has been making drawings of imagined and visionary structures since the early 1980s; he began constructing sculptures in 2001. His three-dimensional work, built with thin pieces of basswood that are glued together, follows the general articulations of his drawings, which look to infinite possibilities of form—design elements that sculpture cannot follow. The imaginative implications of his drawings are supported by his constructions. Talasnik describes himself as a structural artist. Inherently site specific, he draws inspiration from imaginary architectural model structures, which he materializes into natural sculptures that fold into and accentuate the contours of the surrounding landscape.

Background

Talasnik grew up in southwest Philadelphia, where his early interest in architecture and engineering was nurtured by the bridges, tunnels, and sports stadiums of his old neighborhood. His father, an athlete and salesman, liked to build things in the basement; his mother, an opera singer, was the first female graduate of Curtis Institute of Music. An uncle who worked for RCA helped develop a tube used in early color television. A Jewish child in a predominantly Irish-Catholic section of the city, Talasnik was frequently bullied; as a result, he spent a great deal of time in his parents' attic, where he drew and made a model roller-coaster from hundreds of toothpicks. He was intrigued by 1960s black-and-white NASA television transmissions of the U.S. space program, and he became a passionate consumer of the documentary photography in Look and Life magazines, the major weekly periodicals of the day.

Style

Talasnik is particularly interested in the process of invention. Depicting a "fictional engineering," he relies on his own intuitive math to create intricate structures rather than computer drafting programs; he seeks to pay homage to the history of building and transportation. Primarily intrigued with structures defying gravity, he invents, through drawing and sculpture, engineering infused with curiosity for the otherworldly. Seduced by the "aesthetics of the fantastic," Talasnik taught himself to draw by copying the intricate blue prints of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Category:Living people Category:Sculptors Category:1954 births Category:People from Philadelphia Category:New York Daily News people Category:American artists Category:Artists from Pennsylvania

External links

• Official website