Art After Dark returns to Houma
September 5, 2012
Chartering a Comeback
September 5, 2012
Vibrant, animated figures and dynamic abstract shapes swirl and swim across the surfaces of Tammy Bollinger’s eclectic paintings.
“Everybody has a spirit and an energy,” Bollinger says. “You can’t help but be rubbed off by their energy. Not only does it affect your character, it affects your imagination.”
Bollinger, a 41-year-old resident of Larose, put her imagination to use at an early age, when her interest in art began. “When I was a kid, we had crayons, pencils, paper, big coloring books. Since the time I was three, if I’d see something in an old encyclopedia, I’d sit there and copy it. And even if it didn’t come out perfect, I never had anybody tell me that it was wrong.”
Her drawing and coloring laid the foundation for her self-taught style, which developed without any creative restrictions. “I never had anybody tell me that my coloring was wrong. You know how they say, ‘Never tell your children to never color outside the lines,’ because that limits your way of thinking? I never had my mother tell me that. She’d pretty much let me go with the flow, and if I said, ‘Look, Mom!’ she’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s nice’, without looking at it. So from then on, I just started doing it and doing it, and I pretty much taught myself.”
Bollinger’s passion for art continued to the point where she began selling her work in 2004. Living in New Orleans, she developed some notoriety as an up-and-coming artist with a growing fan base. “When I was in New Orleans, people asked me to do commissions, like of their animals, family, or whatever. I mean, I can do that, because that’s what I started doing, training my eye. But abstraction is what I developed into, and that’s what I’m predominantly known for.”
Bollinger describes her paintings as being born out of a combination of bright colors and simplified figures and animals. “One day I started doing, like, different shapes and different colors, and thinking, ‘Oh, that looks good!’ Then it started emerging as shapes from my childhood, like little cartoons that I would draw. Shapes, and peoples’ faces, they all come together in my head. I don’t see a person like most people see them. I see shapes, I see lines, and I remember the person’s face because of shapes and lines. And when I do that, it doesn’t come out exactly perfect, but it comes out the way I want it to come out, the way I visualize it. If I see something, I remember the shapes or anything unusual, or in color. And me, being raised in the North, it was very gray and white and black there. Down here, it’s very vibrant, very vivid.”
Being in Louisiana has added to her artistic inspiration greatly, on both a personal and supernatural level. “The older Cajun people in New Orleans, it was their accent, and just the diverse amount of people that I met, their personalities rubbed off on me. And down here, it’s the food, plus, you know, the people down here. They kind of scooped me in and put me in their nest. I’ve been here now for 15 years. It’s something about here, man, I’m telling you! It’s just like, it draws you in. This one painting I made, that was after Katrina, called ‘Spirits of the City,’ the spirits of the city draw you in, and they talk to you, they give you advice. I mean if you believe in that kind of thing, which I do. I think that they have a lot to do with influencing the ‘inner mind’. Maybe that’s what draws you in, all this energy.”
Bollinger has also experimented with other artistic mediums, such as sculpture and found object art, though not quite to the extent as her paintings. “I’ve dabbled in sculpture. I’d take like a board, like old ironing boards, and I’d do sculptures on boards with found objects. The first one I ever did, I showed it over at the Crescent City Brew House in New Orleans. It was quite cool and got sold very quickly. I’d always thought about doing things with old furniture and turning them into different things. I do wire sculpture, too. Alexander Calder, I found out about him, he’s one of my favorite artists. He was very good at doing wire sculpture. I’ve always loved doing things with wire: making jewelry, horses, things like that, but nothing to the extent of Alexander Calder, who also did mobiles.”
Bollinger also shares her artistic talent with the local community. “I actually have a painting hanging over at the public library. I donated it to them so kids can come and see it, and maybe spark their creativity. I do work for the civic center, like, the signs for the festivals. I’ve got to do the French Food Festival as well.”
Despite the local popularity of her artwork, Bollinger has always kept a humble opinion of her work, never seeing it simply as a way to make money. “When I started selling my art, I’d sell it very cheap. That would make me happy, to sell it to someone who could afford it, you know? If I ever did ‘get famous,’ it would be great, but I would never get a flare attitude about me. If I had a piece of art, and a child said they’d loved it, I would probably give it to them. It’s not about the money. It’s about making a child happy and changing their life. If ever I could change kids’ lives, that’s what I would do.”
On describing her own work, Bollinger always refers to the words of Thomas Bayer, a Tulane University art historian who critiqued her work. “I asked him, ‘So what do you think about my art?’ and he goes, ‘I don’t know, but it makes me very happy.’ He pegged it. Being down here makes me happy!”
Tammy Bollinger, who moved to Larose from New Orleans, complements animated figures with abstract objects. The self-taught bollinger says she appreciates the vibrancy of south Louisiana and tries to portray it in her paintings.
