Ted Fullwood

Used with permission of the photographer, James Dewrance

Status

Extant

Address

480 South 12th Street, San Jose, California, 95112, United States

Visiting Information

If the artist is at home, he is generally pleased to show people through his home and backyard sculpture garden.

View All Images

About the Artist/Site

Fullwood, a San José-based artist who earned an MFA in sculpture and an MA in art history from SJSU, works in a wide variety of media, exploring his personalized and very colorful visual vocabulary. Although proficient and productive in hand-built ceramics in both figurative and abstract formats, perhaps his most innovative pieces are those nonobjective works created from pipe-cleaners, coiled or basket-woven and formed into a range of idiosyncratic freestanding and wall forms. He works out of his home, which has itself been turned into an artwork, with tiles covering the walls, ceilings, floors, and countertops. The colorful and texturally-intense effect of the tiles and the products of his obsessive art-making in ceramics and pipe- cleaners (in addition to other materials) is reminiscent of art environments created by self-taught artists. So, too, is the wild exuberance and imaginative use of these "humble" materials, as he creates forms that are uniquely his own. And while many of his pieces depict humans, he is not concerned with conveying narrative content with them; he takes pleasure mainly in their forms and surfaces.

"I spent my first eighteen years in a near-constant state of daydreaming," he writes. "It is still my fall-back state of mind. As a result, I gravitate toward art forms, mostly sculptural, that tap into and enhance that state. These art forms tend to be time-intensive and repetitive. Through reverie, I find my ideas for art. These ideas are ephemeral; they come in flashes and I don´t question their importance. Instead, I start translating the ideas into material form as quickly as possible, though the whole process will take much longer. I do not want to hash out these ideas with my conscious, rational brain because I consider it to be the bane of creativity and imagination. If someone were to ask me how I got the idea for a piece, I´d likely say, "I don´t remember." for that is how it is."

Many of Fullwood's sculptures are visible from the street, lined up on the long driveway to the side. If the artist is at home, he is generally pleased to show people through his home and backyard sculpture garden.

~Jo Farb Hernández