Artist Statement
My work walks a tightrope between Busby Berkley’s dazzling, synchronized choreography to conversely, falling off a Carnival cruise ship and drowning. There’s glitz, glitter and energetic dancing ladies but there’s also slumping, over-fed obesity and the futile treading of water. Like stepping into a funhouse, these flamboyant worlds engage imaginations, even though you can still see “the man behind the curtain” and the puppet’s strings. Saturated colors, metallic shine and glitter dazzle and delight but don’t be blinded; there’s melancholy hiding just below the surface. I create spaces for exploration and play but like any good story or exciting experience, a subversive, menacing element adds intrigue and danger.
When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle, I went down to help clean-up my family’s house. Most people’s bottom floors flooded ruining the furniture, appliances, carpet and the sides of the roads were packed two-stories high on both sides with water damaged trash. Frantic, stressed, tired out locals, flinging and stacking indiscriminately with no concern for aesthetics sure had some happy accidents. Refrigerators, stacked on pool floats, boogie boards on birdbaths, rugs slung over a pedestal sink with fishing poles as the sprinkles on top, all of these ready-made sculptures sitting patiently, waiting to be picked-up and hauled off. There was stuff, so much stuff you couldn’t imagine where it was all going to go.
My new sculptures are inspired by seeing these unusual pairing and stacks of household objects. Using furniture as a stand-in to reference the body, I dress and adorn these sculptures to create powerful feminized, stacked assemblages.
Bio
Jaime Bull builds a cast of sparkly clad forms that embody a strong, sexy, dangerous female presence. She is a collector and uses found, repurposed materials in her work to reference the body with a feminist perspective. Spending her time dumpster diving at the recycling center or scouring Goodwill to amass second-hand tube tops and sequined prom dresses, Bull’s sculptures have the rhinestone aesthetic of a bedazzled jean jacket or a Mardi Gras float. She examines and questions our relationship with the environment by highlighting a preoccupation with hoarding mass quantities of “stuff."
Bull received her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Georgia, Athens in 2013. She is a recipient of the Willson Center for the Arts research grant for her thesis work Lady Beasts: An Investigation of Womanliness. She has exhibited in Atlanta with Whitespace, Camayuhs, Hathaway Gallery and at the Airport in Terminal E. Regionally, she has shown work at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, University of North Georgia, Auburn University, Albany Museum and the COOP Gallery in Nashville. Most recently, her sculptures were featured in a two-woman show, entitled "Fountain", at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. She is a Vermont Studio School Fellow, attended a two-month residency at the Bernheim Arboretum in Louisville, KY and was an Atlanta Contemporary Art Center Studio Artist in Residence from 2016-2019. She was featured in and on the cover of the 219th edition of Ambit Magazine, London.
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