Live Art at Rail Rider Jamboree
Live Art at Rail Rider Jamboree
Tami Fuller will transform this Saturday’s music into physical form through sound printing
Ever wanted to take a piece of the music home with you after a music festival? This weekend you may have an opportunity to do exactly that, thanks to a Buffalo artist working stageside at the Rail Rider Jamboree at Holiday Valley. Artist Tami Fuller will supplement an afternoon of music by A Girl Named Genny, Driftwood, Keller Williams and Brass Machine for festival-goers with live art, demonstrating an ancient art made modern and using it to imprint a physical signature of the performing artists’ music, making the audial experience physical and touchable using a technique called Suminagashi Painting. All while having a very good time coming full circle to her hometown of Ellicottville.
Fuller is a studio fiber artist working out of Elm Street in the village of East Aurora. She is also a native of Ellicottville, having been born and raised just outside of the village on a working sheep farm and ECS class of 1997.
Suminagashi marbling is an ancient Japanese artform which combines the practice of working with calm water and sumi inks. Originating in 12th century Japanese temples as a form of water meditation, Suminagashi is a simple process with deep implications. It relies on the tensile strength of water to hold stone ground inks which are floated above the surface of a vat of captive water. The water is allowed to still and calm before being approached by the practitioner. The technique teaches patience and calm deliberation in placing the inks and allowing them to spread organically during a contemplation of the water by the artist. This makes it a perfect exercise in mindfulness but also results in clean, crisp modern patterning while using ancient materials. The underlying motions of seemingly calm water can be clearly observed and preserved by imprinting them, or “bringing them forth,” on a material of choice. The accepted common material in use today is rice paper. Fuller, as a fiber artist, uses fine Habotai Silk.
Self-taught and raised by fiber artisans, she uses traditional women’s work as a medium to explore female experiences by intentionally subverting the traditional rules of fiber handcraft. She works in abstract woven tapestry, soft sculpture, and fine silks, with a focus on the intersection between the artist, the natural materials and the role of the environment.
After leaving Ellicottville, Fuller pursued higher education in the sciences, studying biology, chemistry and physics (while work-studying for the art department) in the Hudson Valley. Her fascination with the micro-workings of the natural world are reinforced in all of her work, but this medium in particular, because of how well it works with the implication of the unseen. Specifically, the frequency of sound waves and their physical vibratory effect on water, a phenomenon that we are aware of, given that our bodies are mostly water. This can be observed or “brought forth” by the patterns of the ink are examples of how we can get a view into a reality that exists beside us but remains largely unobserved.
“We are not met with many opportunities to see an observable example of what affect frequency and energy can have on our bodies and our mental states. This is a perfect intersection, because we all know how much music can affect us. This technique makes abstract sound and its energy observable in a way that makes it feel real,” says Fuller.
In this way, the artform allows her to draw sound in a way that isn’t possible with other mediums. As a self-taught pianist, this aspect is of especial interest to Fuller.
She was drawn to the traditional suminagashi practice first by its traditional black and white aesthetic, but fell in love with it after discovering that its principle of suspension of the artist’s ego allowed for greater access to the subconscious creative impulse, leading to more authentic creation. In the traditional eastern art form, the artist is considered a conduit for the energy of the materials, rather than the western model of intentional artist driven production of work. One of the translations of suminagashi is “Poetry on Water.”
Fuller will demonstrate this artform during the RailRider Jamboree festival this weekend while set up close enough to the stage for the impact of the performers’ music to pass through and vibrate the water in her vats, charging the water and the ink with a physical expression of the music, before imprinting the song signatures on 8x8 pieces of vintage silk.
In addition to her studio work, Fuller teaches fiber arts workshops throughout New York State and the Northeast that focus on modernizing the traditional crafts and showing how they can be connected to broader fine art applications. She is a passionate supporter of women’s empowerment and the role of the creative in helping others to learn how to express, and also leads mindful art practice workshops that focus on the development of the creative impulses, drawing on eastern practices.
Also a child of agriculture and a lover of the environment, she produces a small line of ecologically conscious home goods whose goals are to reduce single use plastic consumption and toxic chemicals through her company, Blubird Fiberworks. She uses a transparent supply chain made from ethically and humanely sourced single flock origin wool to produce her products and uses her platform to raise awareness of the importance of small agriculture and conscious consumerism.
More information on her work and her upcoming workshops through MUSEjar in East Aurora can be found on her website at oneblubirdstudio.com and on instagram at @blubirdstudio. Her next show will be May 6, 2022 as part of the East Aurora Art Walk. The longstanding Artwalk, returning after a two-year pandemic hiatus, is re-imagined and brighter than ever. Fuller will show her new series, Wild Forms, out of her studio at 21 Elm Street. For information about the returning event, go to musejar.com.