Art You Want to Jump Into — Houston Sculptor Tara Conley Keeps It Hauntingly Lost and Found

For Houston-based multi-media sculptor Tara Conley, the process of creating a timeless sculpture is a visceral and intuitive one, infused by the love of materials, like bronze and steel. From Conley’s perspective, it is important that a sculpture has a haunting sensibility, leaving an indelible mark on the landscape and on the psyche of all who view her artwork. 

“I would say that I am in a relationship with every piece.” Conley says. “With outdoor sculptures, people either touch it immediately or they’re into it. When you create an outdoor public sculpture, people make it their own.

“This was a big shift for me — creating the large-scale public outdoor pieces. People may love it or hate it, but they make it their own.” 

Conley’s new exhibition dubbed Lost and Found is currently on view at Houston’s ELLIO Fine Art through October 21.

“What ‘Lost and Found’ means is more about how the work evolves,” Conley says. “In the beginning, you know what your show is going to be. And then you make the work, but it evolves from there.” 

When you first gaze at the pieces, Conley’s signature sculpture Untitled captivates you with its intricate design in polished stainless steel, resembling the organic lattice work of a celestial sphere. Her metalsmithing talent is fully expressed in her large-scale pieces.  

“The finish on this sculpture — that excites me,” Conley says. “I love the finish on this. I want the energy and shadow of a certain piece to feel like it was walking off the wall.” 

Conley’s precision with materials stretches beyond bronze and steel and into the realm of fiber and fiberglass. Her craftsmanship is defined through her versatility in creating sculptures that extend from the ceiling, wall and floor. 

Highlighted in her distinctive body of work are Conley’s 1,200 cast bronze phrases which reverberate through line and shadow. Conley is intentional about the echo of the message — and she creates that tension through shadow and font. She also embraces a wry sense of humor in her phrases, like her sculpture titled I Can’t Hear You with Your Pants On. In “Lost and Found,” Conley features 10 different phrases, including, And One Day, We Won’t, Once Was Enough, What Did You Do to Your Today, and Can I Get Me A You. 

“I like the phrases because people feel empowered when they see them,” Conley tells PaperCity. “In 2oo8, I realized that I had a lot of phrases in sketchbook after sketchbook. So at the time, I collected them and had about 400 that I collected over the years — things people say aloud that I have collected over the years.

“I started writing the phrases in wax and casting them in bronze so you can see the phrase and see the shadow on the wall, which was like an echo.” 

Conley notes that there is an authentic creativity in her gift of collecting. 

“Artists are so fortunate because you get to be more of yourself,” Conley says. “I like collecting phrases, and it’s about keeping those things near me — holding on to them, remembering them. There is a collecting element in a line drawing, and there is a creativity in that. It is about being genuine.”

Tara Conley’s Organic Materials 

Conley’s intrinsic love for working with organic materials was shaped by her studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School for American Crafts and Metalsmithing and Jewelry. Her career has spanned two decades, and her distinctive sculptures can be found in several esteemed collections in Houston and across the United States., including at The Helis Foundation in New Orleans.  

“This work with materials suits my personality,” Conley says. “I like things to be very clean. It is infused in everything I create. The more visual information you get, the better.” 

One of Conley’s most impressive public commissioned sculpture projects was a 15-foot stainless steel outdoor sculpture for the Houston Police Department South Gessner Patrol Station. It includes 33 bronze phrases and an indoor steel and glass lobby sculpture. In collaboration with artist Joe Barrington, Conley also created a courtyard installation for Texas Tech University’s Rawls College of Business. Her first public artwork was entitled Bronze Bunny featured in Lafayette Square. 

“It was a pivotal moment when I did my first outdoor piece in 2008,” Conley says. “It was big bunny head, and it stayed for about 12 years in Lafayette Square was only supposed to be there for two years. Now a collector in River Oaks owns it.

“When we welded the base, we saw kids climbing on the piece. That was a completely pivotal moment for me.”

How Sculptures Perform 

Perhaps the most satisfying moment in the preparation of “Lost and Found” has been in the discovery of how a piece will “perform” in the exhibition.  

“I was thinking this morning about this show,” Conley says. “There is some performance element about it for me. It comes down to who’s ready to perform. Which sculpture is ready to perform in the show. There is a reason why some got completed and not done.” 

In “Lost and Found,” the piece entitled It’s Nice to Be Seen has a tender origin story for Conley.  

“For this show, I was thinking a lot about the people who are a witness to your life — (legendary art dealer) Anya Tish. I always liked her,” Conley says. “She passed away this year. It was nice to be seen by her. And I felt seen by her. Her husband once told me, ‘Anya thought you were so creative.’ ” 

Conley has also been highlighted in the quintessential monograph for Texas artists — Texas Artists Today from PaperCity‘s own arts guru Catherine Anspon. Her work is also featured in Touching Fiber Arts by Carol Ikard and Jacque Smith for the Texas Museum of Fiber Arts. 

ELLIO Gallery owner Trish Matute notes that the thread running through much of Conley’s work is an intimate feeling of familiarity in the forms. 

“The work in ‘Lost and Found’ is solid, made of bronze, steel, aluminum and iron, but Conley imbues the metals with a sense of weightlessness,” Matute says. “She describes this work as an exploration of passing time, creating sculpture that simultaneously feel ancient and modern. This juxtaposition found throughout all the work.” 

One of the painted steel pieces of “Lost and Found” entitled Ventura resembles a flowing spiral that is transformed by shadow and light, carrying the visual element of “walking off the wall” as Conley describes it. That represents the birth of every new sculpture from Conley’s initial drawings. 

“I think line is my first language,” Conley says. “In a sense, shadow is another line. In a way, it is a drawing show. There is the art of distilling and filtering that comes along with my work. I pull out certain drawings, and then I narrow it down.”