www.taracarpenterart.com
@taracarpenterestrada

About the Artist
Tara Carpenter Estrada is a professor of art education at Brigham Young University (BYU). As a practicing artist, she makes mixed-media and ceramic art that is shown in national and international juried exhibitions. She presents regularly at conferences and her writing has been featured in Visual Inquiry and Art Education. Tara is also the director of BYU Jumpst(ART), a series of workshops for K-12 students. Tara is mother to two daughters, aged 15 and 9 months. Her work often explores themes of home and family and utilizes her daughters as figure models.

Artist Statement
These collages were created as a way of coping with the loss of time, structure, and balance in the last 9 months. Working and teaching from home with a newborn baby and teen, time has lost meaning and the days blend together. My daughters are inspiration, collaborators, and occasionally saboteurs as I create images and narratives.

The works were created with paper bags saved from grocery pick-ups during the pandemic. The brown bags are painted with acrylic then cut up and pieced together. The resulting collages are layered with oil pastel and pencil.

Video about the artist’s process and ideas