Tamara Wilson is an Alaska born installation artist currently working in Fairbanks, AK. She returned to Alaska after receiving her Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM and an artist residency in Tartu, Estonia. Tamara is the Executive Director of The Lemonade Stand, a mobile art space providing an experimental venue for the arts across the state of Alaska.
“My art practice is a mix between site-specific and studio work. I am inspired by domestic spaces, memories, investigations of how things work, daily routines, and industrial materials, but also the need to escape it all and dream. The push and pull of my pragmatic and childish mind fabricate my ideas within my work with the use of craft and industrial materials, such as building supplies, paper and felt.
The act of creating art allows me to combine my formal art education with skills gained through construction work; both fueling the need I have as a maker. Prior to the pandemic, the media attention that women had commanded in recent years guided me to take a closer look at how I am manipulating materials and ideas. I create feminine interventions with domestic objects and construction materials, disregarding both the object’s and material’s intended use. I use domestic craft materials traditionally considered feminine, such as thread and fabric and I strip them of their associations by using them just as art material. In parallel, I do the same for masculine aspects of the objects and construction materials I use such as hardwood flooring and electrical components. Within my work these worlds intertwine allowing them to become something new just as the art world does for myself.”
-Tamara Wilson
