Donna Dennis is an American sculptor known for her vernacular architecture inspired work. Dennis has said about her work that she is interested in, "a home that is not a home. A home on a journey. A home, a shelter, but without warmth or comfort or security. A 'place to stay' just for one night before moving on and on, never staying long anywhere, never belonging anywhere".
Early life
Dennis went to public school in Ohio and Washington D.C. before 1949 when the family moved to Rye, New York. Dennis had a love of drawing from a young age and remembers drawing half a house in the first grade and objecting to her teacher, that she could draw half a house, half of it was invisible. Her childhood memories of making tree houses and forts also informed her later work. She went to Carleton college in Minnesota where she majored in art program and focused on painting. After college Dennis went to Paris with friend and classmate Martha Diamond to study at Roger Barr's program at the American Center in Paris. During her time in Paris Dennis explored the damage of World War II and became enamored with the layers of rebuilding that had covered the ruins. Upon moving back to New York, Dennis worked at the Whitney Museum as a secretary in the fundraising department. By night Dennis attended classes at the Art Students League. She soon met poet Ted Berrigan through a Carleton classmate, Peter Schjeldahl. Berrigan became a mentor as well as a romantic interest for her. When they broke up Dennis moved into her own studio in 1973 on Duane Street in Tribeca, where she has lived ever since.
1970s
By the 1970s Dennis was making hotel doorways and had her first solo show, 'Hotels' in 1973 at West Broadway Gallery, New York. These works were a stepping point in between Dennis' earlier painting work, as she had previously worked on large scale paintings. The hotel door facades were mostly flat doors to nowhere with formal patterning, they were somewhere in between sculpture and painting. These works centered around the idea that women needed to make their own spaces. Coming out of male dominated minimalism Dennis' work referenced minimalism in the geometry of her work, but also rejected the austerity of minimalism. Dennis rebelled against minimalism in making recognizable environments in human-scale, or rather slightly smaller as her usual scale is 2/3 life size. This break from minimalism along with her involvement in the feminist movement informed her work. "So much has been lost to the world in dismissing the gifts of, and the voices of, women. I wanted to be a part of discovering and bringing that voice to the fore and making sure it would never again be lost or silenced.... My work is a lot about getting people to find beauty in places they might have overlooked or dismissed, just as women's lives have been overlooked and dismissed." Dennis's first subway work, 'Station Hotel', 1973-4 was included with the hotel works. Dennis recalls being on a subway platform when she noticed a door, 'Station Hotel' features tiled walls and 2 light sources, a fluorescent tube outside the doorway and an incandescent light inside. Dennis submitted 'Station Hotel' for a New York Creative Artists Public Service grant and won in the category of painting. 'Station Hotel' led Dennis to keep investigating subway spaces, and after building her first model for a work she made 'Subway with Lighted Interior' 1975. This would be Dennis' first freestanding building sculpture. 'Subway with Lighted Interior' features a small doorway over three steps, one with a vent embedded into it, implying a tunnel below. 'Subway with Lighted Interior' was also Dennis' first work that included rivets and steel columns, though the work is made of wood and masonite. The more industrial architecture of the subway pieces carried into some later works as well. Dennis' next work 'Subway with Yellow and Blue', 1975 was completely its own three-dimensional structure. Dennis wrote about 'Subway with Yellow and Blue' Building these new more complex structural works presented its challenges to Dennis, yet she was resourceful in finding materials and teaching herself carpentry skills. The next turn in Dennis' work is the tourist cabins. Inspired by summer trips in her childhood, Dennis returned to Maine to photograph tourist cabins. This as well as photographs by Walker Evans informed her next work, Tourist Cabin Porch 1976, which features a tiny porch, standing only tall. Inside the porch a tiny door and window are visible, with light softly glowing from within. There is no door from the porch to the outside, yet this is not immediately noticeable. This type of tourist cabin is reminiscent of a time when middle class American families traveled but could not afford to stay in hotels. Around this time, Holly Solomon was becoming a prominent art collector and was introduced to Dennis by Denise Green. Holly Solomon opened the Holly Solomon Gallery at 392 West Broadway in Soho in 1975. She reportedly had called Dennis at home, "Donna, I'm starting a gallery and I want you to be in it." in 1976 Dennis premiered "Tourist Cabins and Subway Stations" at Holly Solomon Gallery. The show was treated as an installation, with specific lighting and recorded sounds, the works were arranged to guide the viewer around the show.
Recent Work
During 1997 Dennis unveiled Coney Island Maze. At the time of debut, Coney Island Maze was Dennis' largest piece to date at 12½ by 27 by 19 feet, and made of wood, acrylic, paint, glass, metal, and light fixtures. Inspired by Dennis' childhood experiences with the maze-like entranceway to the Coney Island Cyclone roller coaster, the piece took users through a turnstile, several sets of steps and walkways to a set of wooden tracks and red metal rails, as well as incorporated a looped audio track of a rollercoaster to enhance the experience. The work, like the name, perpetually evolved during the 12 years it was on display at the gallery at the Neuberger.
