Thoughtful Intuition

Taiko Chandler: Thoughtful Intuition

Littleton Museum

6028 S. Gallup Street, Littleton, CO 80120

September 22, 2023-January 7, 2024

Curated by Moira Casey

Admission: Free

Review by Laura I. Miller

Sometimes art surprises you. And it can happen at any moment. When I recently visited the Littleton Museum, I was expecting something ordinary. But instead, I felt as though I’d been pulled underwater into the artist’s world, one that’s teeming with longing and magic.

An installation view of Taiko Chandler’s solo exhibition Thoughtful Intuition at the Littleton Museum. Image by DARIA.

Admittedly, I arrived late to the Museum to see Taiko Chandler’s exhibition Thoughtful Intuition. “You have 30 minutes in there,” the woman at the front desk told me. As I rushed through, taking photos of each piece that I planned to scrutinize later, I began to experience the pieces more cohesively than if I’d had more time to spend with each one.

Taiko Chandler, Out of the Blue, 2021, cyanotype on kozo paper, 84 x 60 inches. Image by DARIA.

The works Out of the Blue—a collection of cyanotypes made from found objects and kozo paper—and Exploring the Depths—two acrylic paintings—reference most explicitly themes of water and the ocean. But every piece in Chandler’s exhibit, from her paper sculptures to her monotypes, contains shapes and textures that conjure the sea and its creatures.

Taiko Chandler, Exploring the Depths #2, 2020, acrylic paint on wood panel, 36 x 24 inches. Image by DARIA.

Taiko Chandler, Exploring the Depths #1, 2020, acrylic paint on wood panel, 36 x 24 inches. Image by DARIA.

Perhaps this is due to the artist’s origins, growing up surrounded by water on the island of Japan, or because of the exhibition’s theme of creative intuition. I suspect it’s a combination of these, along with a deeper desire to connect with the world in the way that you experience it when you’re swimming in the ocean. In that state, you’re connected to everything else—human, animal, water, earth, air—that the ocean contains.

Taiko Chandler, Chain Reaction, 2023, washers and wire. Image by DARIA.

Taiko Chandler, One By One #2, 2021, discarded rubber traffic delineator base and dressmaker pins. Image by DARIA.

While Chandler’s more traditional works—her monoprints, monotypes, and paintings—depict innovative arrangements of colors, shapes, and textures, when I saw the show, it was her less traditional pieces that surprised me the most. It’s difficult for me to comprehend how artworks made from discarded traffic delineator bases, washers and wire, and found objects such as rusty pins, screws, wires, and broken zippers could be moving, but trust me when I say that they are.

Taiko Chandler, Practice Makes Perfect, 2023, tyvek (monotype) and paper (discarded calligraphy by the artist’s mother), dimensions variable. Image by DARIA.

All of Chandler’s works are stunning, to be sure, and I can’t recommend the site-specific installation Practice Makes Perfect, featuring monotype sculptures alongside her mother’s discarded calligraphy, enough. But the unexpected gift of this exhibition is the care and detail with which the artist describes her process and the meaning behind her creations. It’s rare for an artist to have the ability to put into words such a mysterious thing as artmaking, which oftentimes involves subconscious desires and plans gone awry. The explanations that accompany Chandler’s works, both installed alongside them and printed in a booklet available to viewers, are a true inspiration.

Taiko Chandler, On and On #124, #136, and #93, 2023, 2023, and 2020, monoprint diptych with stencils, 43 x 30.5 inches, 49.4 x 33.25 inches, and 43 x 30.5 inches. Image by DARIA.

A view of Thoughtful Intuition at the Littleton Museum. Image by DARIA.

It seems to me that whether Chandler is creating prints, paintings, sculptures, or cyanotypes, she allows herself to be guided by the unpredictability of the physical material as well as the artistic style that she’s developed over years of practice. I felt the isolation that Chandler so articulately writes about, as well as a true desire to bring new life to that which had been left for dead. And this gives me hope that art can change people and create (or illuminate) connections that would have otherwise remained invisible.

Laura I. Miller is a Denver-based writer and editor. She received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona.