Tammy Bality
As an only child growing up on the Colorado farm her family originally homesteaded in 1875, Tammy Bality shared a special connection with animals: The horses, calves, dogs, cats, were her friends. Ever since she could hold a crayon, art has been Tammy's form of expression. Tammy now creates sculptures that capture animals' life force and honor their spirits. Compelled to create Tammy has always felt a bond with animals and aimed to recreate that feeling in art, but it wasn't until the 1988 Loveland Sculpture Show that she felt compelled to try her hand at sculpting bronze. Drawing on a variety of life experiences and technical workshops, Tammy developed her own signature style utilizing different techniques and media to create unique pieces representing our interconnectedness with animals. Mixing media and melding heritages People have always had a spiritual connection to animals through the millennia, whether it's through Native American folklore or Celtic mythology, and Tammy aims to honor that through her artwork. Growing up in Colorado, Tammy loved the tributes to animals incorporating antlers, fur, feather and stone seen in Native American artwork. These tributes led the artist to delve into her own heritage, exploring Swedish, Irish and Scottish history for inspiration and she was thrilled to discover that her Druid and Viking ancestors also had animal totems and tributes. Tammy combines traditional influences with a variety of media and sculpting techniques to create innovative art that gives voice to nature's spirit. She sculpts horses, dogs, birds of prey, bulls and bears from clay and either fires the clay or casts the piece in bronze or glass (lead crystal), incorporating silver and stone as well. Tammy enjoys exploring the strengths of each medium – the freedom and spontaneity of ceramic, the strength and precision of bronze, the luminosity and intrigue of crystal – and complementing their weaknesses with the strengths of the others.