Gene Tanta is a Romanian-born American artist and poet working across painting, poetry, translation, and public exchange. A two-time Fulbright grantee to Romania, he holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His work explores color, migration, memory, and the politics of language.

Are paintings available?

Selected paintings and works on paper may be available by inquiry. Availability changes as works move between the studio, exhibitions, collections, and ongoing bodies of work. For acquisitions, studio visits, or specific works, please send a note through the contact form.

Are prints and editions available?

Prints, editions, publications, and related studio works are developed selectively. Some works may be available directly, while others are offered by inquiry or through small-run releases. Editions extend the studio practice through forms that can circulate beyond a single exhibition or private collection.

Can I visit the studio?

Studio visits are available by request when there is a clear fit with the work. Curators, collectors, writers, educators, students, and collaborators are welcome to send a note through the contact form with a short description of the context and timing.

What is Found Art Studio?

Found Art Studio is the mobile physical studio and public-facing arm of Gene Tanta's practice. It gathers residencies, workshops, educational projects, access initiatives, studio visits, and temporary working sites under one flexible studio name. Instead of naming a single address, it names a way the work moves: through making, teaching, hosting, gathering, and exchange.

LogicHum.com is a separate project space for Gene Tanta's related digital work, including apps, games, tools, AI systems, and other interactive forms. GeneTanta.com remains the home for paintings, works on paper, books, editions, biography, CV, and the public-facing art practice.

Do you take commissions or collaborations?

Commissions and collaborations are considered when there is a strong fit with the work. This may include paintings, texts, educational projects, curatorial, editorial, games, or experimental projects developed in dialogue with a person, site, institution, or public context. The best inquiries are specific, open, and grounded in a real relationship to the work.

How should curators, collectors, or institutions reach out?

Curators, collectors, publishers, educators, and administrators are welcome to send a note through the contact form. For exhibitions, acquisitions, studio visits, commissions, workshops, speaking engagements, press, or institutional projects, please include a short note about the context, timeline, and nature of the inquiry.

Books by Gene Tanta | Poetry, Art Books & Children’s Literature

Gene Tanta’s books gather poetry, prose, art books, and children’s literature.

Poetry Books

Unusual Woods

Unusual Woods is Gene Tanta’s first poetry book, with a prose introduction on biography and innovation. Surreal, image-driven poems move through complicity, interiority, and dystopian fields.

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XPMK: an illuminated chapbook

XPMK is an illuminated chapbook where drawing, translation, and fragment share the page.

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Cosimo & the Queen's Peach

Cosimo & the Queen's Peach is an epistolary collection of poetic exchanges via email between Peter Hughes and Gene Tanta.

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Last Psalm

Last Psalm presents Constantin Acosmei’s poems as translated from the Romanian into English by Gene Tanta. A poetic collection moving through grief, existential malfeasance, and the limits of address.

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Art Books

Language as Visual Object

Language as Visual Object is part of the Meditations Series by Gene Tanta on the play between words and color field.

Forthcoming
Visual Ethnography

Visual Ethnography is part of the Meditations Series by Gene Tanta on the purview auto-documentation opens.

Forthcoming
The Angry and the Dead

The Angry and the Dead is part of the Meditations Series by Gene Tanta on the ethics of public memory.

Forthcoming
Patchwork Portraiture

Patchwork Portraiture is part of the Meditations Series by Gene Tanta on the joys and challenges of capturing the feeling of someone.

Forthcoming

Children’s Books

The Plastic Knot

Riley finds plastic everywhere, from the cereal bag to the cafeteria orchestra. A ruler that bends but never snaps turns the material into a mindset: noticing is the first act of change.
Picture book · Ages 4–8 · About 250 words · Manuscript complete
The Plastic Breakfast

Riley starts noticing plastic at breakfast and can't stop, from the cereal bag to the ocean's who-eats-who. A middle grade series of gentle surreal humor and vivid images, where noticing turns into doing.
Middle grade · Ages 8–12 · Books 1–2 in revision
Spelling Words

A craftswoman and her son face a gap too wide to measure. His spell, "sine, cosine, tangent," trades angles for lengths, so trigonometry arrives as magic before it arrives as math.
Picture book · Ages 6–9 · About 420 words · Manuscript complete
Bayes Bunny and the Maybes

A bunny meets each rustle and shadow with a guess, then changes its mind as new clues arrive. Maybe… then hop. Probability arrives as a feeling before it arrives as a number.
Picture book concept · Ages 3–7 · In development
Tristan Tzara’s Proximal Child

Near and far depend on where you stand and how you move. A child finds that distance changes when the viewer does.
Picture book concept · Ages 6–9 · In development
Professor Popper’s Mistake Machine

Professor Popper’s machine learns the only way it can: try, fail, adjust. Try 1… Better! Every mistake moves the build forward.
Picture book concept · Ages 5–8 · In development