Incised

Tara Thacker is a central NC-based visual artist renowned for her ceramic sculptures and expansive wall installations composed of thousands of delicate, hand-crafted components. Her work emphasizes fluidity, softness, and repetition, challenging traditional perceptions of ceramics as rigid and static. Thacker earned her BFA in ceramics from VCU in Richmond and an MFA from the UW in Seattle. Alongside her studio practice, she has contributed to arts education and administration, including roles as Visual Arts Director at the VT Studio Center and as Sculpture Professor at Northern Vermont University. She currently serves as guest faculty in the graduate ceramics program at UMass Dartmouth. Thacker's work has been exhibited widely and is represented by Cohab Gallery (High Point), Gravers Lane Gallery (Philadelphia), Stewart Gallery (Boise), MACA (Costa Rica), and Orth Contemporary (Tulsa). Her practice blends material rigor with a meditative, organic aesthetic rooted in process and form.

Walking is part of my daily and creative process-to unify my mind and body, to reflect, to inspire, to look, to gather. On these walks over the last 4 years, I've collected the remnant beaver sticks that washed along the shoreline and appeared after the spring rains moved the dams. My process included collecting, sorting, cutting, dying, drilling, and sewing. This work speaks to my love of materiality and fascination with transformation. I see these sticks as 3D drawings, abundant with mark making and filled with information. I've revealed the depth and beauty of these surfaces by dying them. The incised marks become darker where the teeth etched against the grain and depending on the type of wood that was foraged and gnawed, the dye absorbed differently, exposing the spectrum of color found in black. As my first collaborative sculpture, I must share thanks for the Castoridae family-the many beavers who incised the thousands of intricate marks on this work.