eclectic urge
TAMARA GALIaNO
eclectic urge
ScuLpTURE
Drawing on a lifelong love of working with textiles, wood, and discarded objects, my sculptures provide me with a way to get at aspects of emotion that exist beyond words. My interest in symbolism, abstraction, and the psychology of interpretation play a role in steering the outcome of these objects - providing a framework for producing a vague, and sometimes unsettling, suggestion of shape and form. I first ask myself, "How close can I get to making my point while providing the least information?" and use that as a guide throughout my process.
MiNI sERieS
An ongoing series started in 2021 as an artistic response to isolation and disconnection I felt during the first few years of the pandemic. I wanted to create small, playful works of art that anyone could afford as a way to spread joy and connection in difficult times. I have kept producing them ever since. As of January 2026 the series contains over 75 pieces. All but a few have found homes.
LOW ReLIEF
Experimental pieces made from cardboard, spackle, and acrylic paint mounted on wood panel
TRAsH jEWeLRY
A large part of my artistic practice involves the implementation of repurposed materials. Whether it is the fabric scraps, old clothes, and recycled polyfil I use for my soft sculpture or the found plastic and wood pieces I incorporate in my installation work and mini sculptures, my love of objects and magpie-esque nature join well with my deeply ingrained ethic of working with the leftovers of overconsumption. My ongoing Trash Jewelry series is a exercise in transformation, an attempt to elevate the things we throw away into something that transcends the material itself.
scrap wood and used glow sticks
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cardboard and t-shirt scraps
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pipette tips, a register tape spindle, a cord minder, sock packaging, coffee stirrers, and a cording spindle
Samples of my 2D and printmaking work including screenprints on paper, blockprinted fabric, digital collage, comics and zines, and a flash fiction collection inspired by a local photographers' photos of trash.
PRoDucTs
An assortment of products I've produced from 2007 until today. All items were designed, fabricated, and printed by me.
CRYPtIc SYsTeMs
exhibition
Solo Exhibition ---> 2021
at The DAG Gallery at Golden BeltCryptic Systems was my second solo exhibition and displayed artwork I created between 2018 and 2021. It was the first exhibit that featured the textile pieces that have become a signature of my artistic style.Color, minimalism, and playfulness were the foundational aesthetics I drew upon to create this body of work. I used wood painted in matte black to build enigmatic, simplified, monochrome "machines", then merged them with soft, organic, visceral elements.Shapes that hint at body parts bursting from "clouds", vibrant plant-like tendrils dripping from a quilted black mass, an enigmatic black box covered in dials perched atop an intestinal knot -- all of it spoke to my deep sense of anxiety at the time, over my assumed place in society as a woman and mother, the rise of technology that threatens to take away our joy and humanity, and the cryptic systems humans create that dictate and control our lives.
YeLloW HoUSe GAlLERY
project
Yellow House is a 12” x 8” x 11” gallery I created in 2025, dedicated to presenting art on a micro scale. Born into this world as a box for distributing real estate fliers, the Yellow House became a victim of the digital age and was left discarded in the weeds behind The Scrap Exchange. I outfitted it with a new frontage, wired it up with lighting, and added some clean white "gallery walls". Now it sits in the building's entryway as a space for local artists to present their smallest of creations.
ThE ARTiSt MARKeT
project
The Artist Market is a store within a store that provides an outlet for artists and makers to sell their creations. Participation is juried, but open to both professional and hobbyist creators in the Durham-area who are passionate about selling their work. Artists make a commission once their items have sold.The Artist Market has existed in one form or another at The Scrap Exchange since it's location on Foster St in the 2000's. When I was hired to revitalize and manage the Market at it's Lakewood location in April of 2023, it was mostly defunct, featuring only five artists and issuing payouts based on the collection of paper receipts.My first step was to renovate the stark and neglected space. Calling upon my past training in theatrical set building, I created signage, painted the walls, hung fabric panels to mask old infrastructure, collected an assortment of donated furniture and displays, built dividers, and installed the final layout.From there I turned to my background as a seller/creator/business owner, store manager, and a wholesale buyer. I devised a method for consignment management within our POS system, built a webpage and submission form, set guidelines, formulated rules and contracts, launched social media promotions, and selected the first group of artists to sell in the space.Since then the Artist Market has grown exponentially each year in both sales and participation. As of January 2026 it is at full capacity with 60 artists and issued almost $44k in commissions to local artists in 2025. It includes a vintage and collectibles section which I curate to help offset the generous commission rate we offer. I also create Scrap Exchange merchandise such as screenprinted t-shirts, hand-cut bumper stickers, scrap kits (such as make your own scrappy bugs and snails), and tote bags.Collaboration, community-buidling, and sharing the work of others is an integral part of my artistic practice. The Market is a true labor-of-love for me and something I am deeply proud of. It connects artists with their audience, promotes shopping local, entertains customers, and provides jobs for amazing people. Please visit and support us if you are ever in the area. I promise you won't be disappointed.
ThE CAMeRoN GaLlERY
project
Artwork pictured is by various North Carolina artists.The 'Mongo' piece is my work, as well as aspects of the installation in the final image
The Cameron Gallery is a art space I manage within the The Scrap Exchange Reuse Arts Center in Durham, NC. We mount 6-8 shows per year featuring artists from all over North Carolina.The Gallery is first and foremost a community space where both trained and self-taught artists share the walls. My personal mission as Gallery Coordinator is to provide an engaging, thoughtful, inclusive, and accessible space for all types of artists to share their creations.Through this approach I hope to delight and inspire viewers, making the case that art is not just for the trained and wealthy. Creativity taps the essence of what it means to be human. It is a universal urge and a practice that has no rules or limits. It is a vital tool for communication and something we need to better invest in as a community. Despite the capitalist rhetoric we all internalize, the impact of art on the human experience should not be minimized.
MaKe ARt NoT tRASH
installation
Commissioned mirror frame made entirely from reused, secondhand materials.
DuRHAM SToReFrONt PrOjEcT
installation
Durham Storefront Project was a yearly exhibition that sought to activate vacant storefront and display windows throughout downtown Durham, NC. Produced in partnership with Mercury Studio, Carrack Modern, and Open Art Society, the project ran for three years and featured dozens of artists.My piece "Same Circle" was chosen to fill the window next to this amazing vintage brickwork. To make these hangings, I started with clear plastic discs that top spindles of blank CDs. Notching the edges, I then wound other creators' discarded yarn scraps around them, exploring how many different patterns I could derive from the same shape. By combining them to look like fabric weavings and attaching them to a source spindle, I hoped to evoke the idea of unity amid variation, as well as the deep tradition of North Carolina as a textile producer.The piece was installed a second time in a store front in downtown Fuquay-Varina, NC in conjuction with the same organizations (that iteration is depicted in the image with the wooden ceiling).
A small sampling of some of my experimental sound pieces with visuals attached. I will be adding more soon.
Forks (2023)
Instruments: tuning forks(headphones recommended for best listening experience)------------------------NOTES:This piece began with a box of tuning forks I found at a thrift store. I noticed that when you hit two forks together, then moved them closer and further apart as they rang out, the sound would morph and shift as the sound waves collided. So I set up my mic and captured about a dozen samples, changing to different pitch forks as I went. Once the samples were made, I imported them into a DAW to arrange and layer them into the final piece. There are no effects, just the pure recordings collaged into a composition. While composing I was thinking about forks metaphorically, how the effect of two tuning forks colliding and distorting each others’ sound related to forks in my life path, both past and future.
Last Girl's Diary (2003)
Instruments (best I can recall): Korg MS-20, toy keyboard, bass drum, drum sticks, bass guitar, cassette tape case, hands, various toys and household objects.Recorded and edited with a cassette 8-track and Garage Band.(headphones recommended for best listening experience)-----------------------NOTES:I created this experimental sound piece sometime way back in 2003. It was inspired by my own childhood imaginings while playing in the woods, or on isolated banks of rivers, anyplace where signs of life were thin. I loved to pretend I was one of the last people on earth, suddenly on my own and figuring out how to survive. At age 25, when I was messing around with this series of short musical sketches, I had just moved from the “big city” to a quasi-rural (in comparison) rental outside a college town. The nights there were darker than I’d ever known, and I’d often catch glimpses of wild turkeys or the old lady from next door passive-aggressively mowing my section of our communal lawn out my back window. Young, unmoored, and socially isolated, suddenly 600 miles from everything I had ever known, life was forcing me into shapes I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. This was the mental landscape from which Last Girl’s Diary was born.
sound and video by Tamara Bagnell
about
Tamara Galiano is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Durham, North Carolina. Although no medium is off limits if the right idea presents itself, her favorite ones to work in are sculpture, installation, experimental music, and speculative fiction. Her aesthetic is playful, vibrant, and at times unsettling, using the colors and sensations of childhood to translate the visceral, and often inexplicable, landscape of adulthood. Her work seeks to get at something deeper about our nature as humans, to reveal and describe things about ourselves that exist beyond words -- whether it is something as simple as our longing to play, or as complex as the ways we cope with fear and anxiety over a future that feels out of our control.When not making her own art, Tamara facilitates the presentation of other artists’ work as the Gallery and Artist Market Manager at The Scrap Exchange. In addition to those roles, she also collaborates with other staff and community members to produce popular cultural events such as Smashfest and the Trashion Show.
All text, images, and artwork on this website are copyright Tamara Galiano, 2026, unless otherwise noted. Please do not reproduce any of the content on this website without permission.
