40 ATIM’S TOP 60 MASTERS 2023
D
DEVON
GOVONI
evon is a visual artist with an extensive international exhibition and publication history specializing in oil painting, mixed media, sculpture, and photography.
People often ask, “why monsters?” I create monsters because they represent anything and everything possible in life. They can represent emotions, good, bad, and indifferent. They can represent hopes, dreams, fears, and nightmares. Monsters can be masks to deceive others from knowing the true parts of yourself or even to deceive yourself of your true parts. They can be liberating once you know how to manage them, be vulnerable, and be open to exposing them to the world. People often think they are weird and creepy because they present as “not normal,” yet they are the most normal of all things that exist.
She is also a doctor of expressive arts therapies, licensed mental health counselor, board-certified art therapist, registered expressive arts therapist, and an adjunct professor at the University of Montana. Devon’s private practice, Abstract Therapy LLC, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, offers action-oriented approaches created through systemic, interdisciplinary lenses combined with the expressive arts.
All monsters I create never existed in the tangible world until I brought them to life. I want to encourage others to bring their monsters to life too!”
Devon is also a part of Voces Arts and Healing, a team of expressive arts healers who have been working in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, providing mental health and expressive arts healing services to asylum seekers and workers in the shelter systems. Her newest project mentioned is her therapeutic monster deck and accompanying activity books to be released in the coming year.
“Dallas” Mixed Media Sculpture
“I am genuinely intrigued by the human condition and how people are intertwined in divinely unique ways. Creating art has been a way to explore the intricacies of relationships throughout my life. I believe that the overall art-making processes can assist a person in understanding the world from different perspectives. I feel so incredibly fortunate to be able to explore existential meaning in the world individually and alongside others who look to find deeper meaning within their own lives in my professional work.
“Birdy” Mixed Media Sculpture
More recently, my art is leading me to do more mixed media and photography work, but mainly to do more mixed media sculpture. I find it to be a unique type of media blending in the final phases of the sculpting process due to the sculptures always ending up in the state of an entity itself, some form of monster who tends to have a voice of its own, a place at the table. So by, adorning the monster after going through a process of phases is the final phase where it actually comes to life.
“People Eater” Mixed Media Sculpture
devongovoniartist.com
