Tami Fuller & Ed Hallborg

Opening Reception: 8/28 6-8PM

Tami Fuller is a studio fiber artist based out of East Aurora, working as an abstract weaver and felt artist. Born and raised on a family sheep farm, and connected to the fiber community in a professional capacity, using traditional women’s work as a medium to explore these concepts was a natural choice. She is self-taught and works in abstract using woven tapestry, soft sculpture, mixed media and metals.

Her work is driven by first person experiences with abuse and assault, and she uses her work to explore post-trauma identity concepts from the female perspective. She uses traditional process based technique as a jumping off point for intuitive artmaking. Her work alludes to entrapment, suspended states and recovery through self-actualization against the backdrop of larger social discourse surrounding female trauma, victimization and reclamation.

Fuller’s work blends the fluidity and softness of wool with sharp lines and metal. She began deliberately interjecting chaotic elements and foreign objects into linear weaving as an exercise in letting go of conforming to external standards, and her weaving mimics this sense of escape and overflow.  The contrasting elements create work that is thought provoking, visceral, and at once stark and delicate.. She is especially fascinated by unraveling of one’s identity during crisis mirrors the disintegration from linear form into abstract, and believes that the illusion of loss is a path to personal freedom and empowerment.

Her practice revolves around survivorship and a route to a successful self-actualization and integration process.

Ed Hallborg is a Western New York based Scenic Designer, Studio Artist and Educator. He first began working with wood forms and concrete while training as a Carpenter’s Apprentice in the Southwestern United States. He holds a BS in Theatre Design through the SUNY program.

My sculptural practice is based around an unusual method of applying very thin layers of cement to various objects in a technique I refer to as Cement Painting and the final product as a Glyph.  This process allows me to create small scale, low relief cement sculpture with the visual weight of larger architectural concrete work yet remains surprisingly lightweight for display.

For this show, I have focused on the 3-way collaboration that exists between the artists and the curator.  I have chosen work that I hope partners well with Tami Fullers’ fascinating Fiber/wood/steel pieces. I have also chosen pieces that focus on the very nature of studio curation and what the presentation of a work can bring to the viewer. Collaboration Piece, for example, is delivered to the gallery in about 10 sections, without a drawing and only rough instructions, and therefore the actual arrangement of the work is arbitrary.