11/15/21 – 1/7/22

Artist Talk
Tuesday, November 16, 2021 @12:30

We Can See the Sky From Here
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 5’x6’ 2020

Taking over a year to make, Cartier added a layer each day to create this large-scale piece. She doesn’t begin each piece with a firm plan, but rather lets the piece grow naturally. She works with an aggressive style, taping and tacking the different images and sketches while ensuring that all elements of the composition work together. With each layer Cartier likes to “get through it quickly and attack it,” getting rid of any blank spaces.
This piece shows her optimism and sense of community for Camden. The imagery of the two girls looking into the sky suggests that “there is something greater out there, and we are all in this together,” Cartier explains. This subject with surrounding local relics and scraps shows how devoted Cartier has become to the city of Camden.
~ Lauren Yingling ‘25
Gallery Exhibition Research Assistant

 

Artist Statement

I have always lived inside an image-based culture. Consumer society taught me how to become literate in visual imagery and read messages, but never to excavate the origins of my most cherished rituals and assumptions. You know, the things that appear around me every day in the world that most don’t question. The images that circulate throughout society are constantly being constructed, reconstructed and recycled. And here I am, decoding the ever more complex messages, signs and traces of the everyday. The current accessibility of information has made it easy to combine and recombine- and form a version that is my own.

Every source, situation and identity morphs continually depending on time, place and disposition. Things, places and people come and go; nothing is permanent. Here I go again, sifting through the rubble to find something that can be made again, reused, and combined. Bit by bit by bit. Are you in or out? Life goes on.

My hand activates an existing source; I see myself as a catalyst that transfers other peoples’ hands, heart, head and voices in a collaborative process. The focus on my work isn’t myself, even though I am the composer, the chooser. One that mixes, not just in terms of imagery, but in terms of methodologies. I use the found and the felt, the improvisational and the strategic. Some things you stumbled upon or you think you find. Other things you run right back into, or they find you all over again. Most of the time I make do with what I have available to me. A certain type of fragmentation.

I deal with pieces, scraps. These pieces are something I want to hold on to. Something that presented a value to me I need to preserve, save. I will find a use for them later, within my visual lexicon of sources, fragments. Pick up the pieces and put them back together, like brand new. The bodilessness of information is the recombiner’s pleasure. The hardest part is deciding which are worth keeping and which parts you could throw away. Not all shards are worth saving.

Constructing images through methods of collage is immediate and ferocious; no time to think twice, no room for second guessing. Making a quick decision right then and there; get on with it, hurry up! The result of rapidly combining forms, shapes and text together is instantly gratifying and indulging. Collage is a form of urgent process, response and action. Second guessing destroys the intensity of the present; the present moment is the most important moment. That snapshot freezing time and place, solidifying the value of the image. These times we live in are bold, intense. I get lost in it. I make paintings that embody the present moment and place in which I find myself.

I occupy myself in the seamless integration of various surfaces and forms within that surface. Rectifying the incoherence of mark-marking between a digital surface and painted gesture, I am informed by the graphic crispness of the way images are digested. Lines can connect images, points, references and surfaces. Painting on digital and printed materials serves to expose the fragility of the surface.

I tear what the world gives me into pieces and put it back together with paint. Tearing is an act of frustration, defiance and play against what is brilliantly manufactured for me to consume. Ripping is a way for me to physically expose rough edges and ideas that do not align perfectly. I’m making sense of all the parts as they appear. Not all relationships are seamless, but mark making can pull sources, images and text together. That immediate gesture and line in the form of brushstroke is so gratifying, instant. Painting is as immediate as I am, as burning as the present moment; a source of direct activation. I choose to distort and delay the instant.

My mixed media paintings have reached a higher level of density than ever before. Induced by the rapid compilation of sources and signals. Filling up the spaces of my daily existence. I include everything I can within an image, unable to leave anything out. Let me hide here in everything I see, everything I’m exposed to. The breathing room that once lived inside my paintings has vanished; it’s been filled with more density, more noise and more chaos. That chaos speaks to the way I approach making images. Signs. Layers. Versions. Faster, Nearer. More intense. Loud. Fast. Bold. Unrestricted. Turn me up. Set me free. I don’t know how to whisper.

Crimson Tide
Acrylic/mixed media on found window
30”x30” 2020

Say Goodbye
Acrylic/mixed media on found window
28”x28” 2019

These pieces illustrate Cartier’s power to repurpose anything around her. While walking she came across the two window panes and immediately found inspiration. Cartier sees opportunity in what is typically viewed as trash and gives it life once again. These pieces show her dedication to repurposing materials. She describes the process of collaging and painting on both sides of the glass to be a challenging yet fun and rewarding experience. These are examples of Cartier’s exploration into adding sculpture to her repertoire.
~ Lauren Yingling ‘25
Gallery Exhibition Research Assistant

Biography

Danielle Cartier is best known for her mural projects and large-scale, multimedia paintings made from reconstructed materials, recombined ephemera and layered printmaking and painting processes. Danielle was born in San Jose, CA and grew up in the Northern California Bay Area.  She graduated from Sonoma State University in 2014 with a BFA degree, concentrating in both painting & printmaking. In 2017, she received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her work has been viewed in various exhibitions across the West Coast, Midwest, South, New England and the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Cartier has experience teaching studio art courses at Sonoma State University in California, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Harcum College in Pennsylvania, Rutgers University and Stockton University in New Jersey. Most recently, Cartier has painted and over fifteen public art murals within Camden, NJ. Danielle continues to make large-scale multimedia paintings and public art murals from her local studio at Camden Fireworks Gallery & Creative Space in Camden, New Jersey.