Gallery: Teresa Sullivan
FIRST THURSDAY OPENING July 5, 6-8 pm
Artist Teresa Sullivan is this month’s featured artist in The Gallery.
Teresa Sullivan creates intricate and monumental sculptural jewelry from humble materials using the ancient technique of beadweaving, revealing her love of the surreal and the irreverent. The stories she tells in her beaded tapestries, jewelry, and sculpture are about the power of people discovering their abilities; from super heroines of comics and science fiction to the real mentors of her life. The tiny beads are transformed from something delicate to bold, dense, self supporting artworks.
Although she has an idea for a particular piece before she even strings her first bead, her mode of working allows for discovery throughout the weaving process. Insights develop with the creation of each piece, allowing her to work through the difficult stages and solve the aesthetic and technical problems of making artworks with beads.
Teresa turns this medium, long marginalized as safe/rote/escapist, on its head. Intricate, repetitive weaving techniques give these tiny components structural integrity. The intensely methodical pace of the work allows her to flesh out ideas as she works. With iconic imagery and symbolic use of color, she encourages discussion and even dissent.
The untitled “Ropes” are a post-apocalyptic take on Victorian-era bell pulls. An art world still striving to assert its relevancy in a postmodern/post-everything setting has ever more rigid rules. The heads in these “ropes” call attention to the real people behind the roles they’re assigned and the groups into which they’re lumped—-or pulled.
The untitled “Heads” and “Stacked Heads” satirize the deference given to hierarchy, ancestry and other forms of intimidation—-they’re hollow inside. This hollowness actually lends structural strength to the pieces. With a wooden or other solid core, the beads would be more likely to break in a fall.
Please visit Teresa Sullivan’s website to learn more.