Tammy Jo Wilson is a contemporary American artist who is best known for her explorations into the notion of identity, repression and the dilution of African American culture in her art. Wilson was born in 1974 in La Crosse, Wisconsin and was adopted at two years of age into a traditional Mid-Western family. At the age of 15 she began to study painting under magical realist painter Larry Elliott. After working with Elliott for several years Wilson spent five years traveling extensively in the USA and parts of Canada. In the later part of Wilson's travels she picked up a camera and began photographing the American landscape. This led her to Portland, Oregon where she got her BFA in photography and eventually to San Jose California were she received her MFA in 2007. In 2006 Wilson's work was included in exhibitions at Pro Arts gallery in Oakland, Works gallery in San Jose and the San Jose Museum of Art. Currently Wilson has expanded her artistic range creating installations and 3-D works using fabric and edible materials. She has also begun a series of wood pieces involving the use of her own hair, thread and enamel. Her work maintains a visually perfect imbalance that creates a sense of tension and intrigue. Wilson delicately arranges figures and faces together on simple fabrics in away that disallows time and space to interfere with the viewers reading of the work. Her work has been compared to such artists as Jenny Holzer and Lorna Simpson. Wilson's goal is to communicate her experiences in an attempt to convey a larger truth that reaches across cultures to broaden the realization of humanities sameness.