Tara Cronin is an artist working in various mediums, focusing on photography, installation, and book arts. She received her MFA from the ICP-Bard Program in New York. She received her BA in Writing at New School University. While Tara battled hospitalizations and mental illness during her undergraduate work, her healing process veered her toward combining photography, writing, and, art-making in response.
She has been focusing on exploring a language that has no words but rather a rhythm and harmony – that of life. Mythology employs language as a potent tool to connect humans with one another. Each of her images are excerpts from mythological and long-existing tales, characters, and creatures from cultural histories around the globe.
Haruspicy
This project, entitled Haruspicy, is a continuation of my earlier project “Archetypal.” Beginning with 4×5 Black and White negative, I scan, print, and, then, draw directly onto the print.
Materials are important to my process as in this work I use my own blood [sterile & fixed], and pencil, to reference ideas surrounding language and writing systems, both with our writing tools as well the “language” of life.
Each subject is one survey of the many ways an ancient Diviner, Haruspex, or in today’s era, a fortune teller, might find meaning in what seems to be chaos. This can be looking at entrails, patterns in fallen bones, or leaves in the wind.
This is one way we listen to the instinctive guidelines we already have within us. The development of language and writing systems is fascinating as we began by drawing
experiences from nature surrounding us. This, then, progressed into pictorial as well as symbolic languages. The practice of Haruspicy is a link between the languages we currently use, and the ones we’ve lost.
Final unframed dimensions are 17×22” and each piece is unique.
To view more of Tara’s work please visit her website.