ALISON FULLERTON

Alison comes to Nashville via New York, Austin, and Stuttgart, Germany where she lived and immersed herself in European encaustics, German expressionism, and ceramics from 2016-2019. She traveled extensively across Europe studying with artists in several countries. She worked in a sculpture atelier with Birgit Feil, and was invited to membership in Stuttgarter Kunstlerbund, the oldest art guild in Germany. As a teen Alison studied fine craft and pottery at Rochester Institute's School of Craft before enrolling at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a master’s in advertising. She worked in marketing and teaching, and in 2012 founded "Ms. Biz Youth Entrepreneurs." a STEM/Maker education initiative teaching creative coding & entrepreneurship to kids. In 2016 she moved to Germany and became a full-time artist.

Alison has exhibited in the US and Europe in galleries and museums, at Vanderbilt University, and has authored articles about encaustic wax. Her work was recently on 10 Nashville billboards, on the cover of Wax Fusion magazine, and she was invited to teach and speak at the International Encaustic Association's National conference.

Alison combines organic, ancient materials such as encaustic and clay, with new hitech textiles and construction materials. Her abstracts combine encaustic with textiles, paper, clay, tar, lime putty and shellac. Alison takes a maker-centered, experimental approach, learning by tinkering with nontraditional media. She is inspired by abstract artist Mark Bradford, "If Home Depot doesn't have it, Mark Bradford doesn't need it."

My encaustic wax wall sculpture explores the harmony and disharmony of nature & man. I find great meaning in materials, and for years worked exclusively in organics. But this body of work is born out of my frustration with man-made non sustainable packaging. As I experimented with the goal of re-purposing, I discovered fascinating properties, particularly when heated or combined with clay or encaustic. It's my hope that these works spark curiosity and conversations about materials and their sustainability.

Encaustic, which is pigmented beeswax; was used by the ancient Greeks and Egyptians for repairing ships and for painting. My wall sculpture combines packaging, construction textiles, asphalt, lime putty, tar, and shellac with clay, beeswax, damar resin, and pigments.