By Linda O’Keeffe / Henry Magazine
Above image: A trio of graphic wallcoverings: Surrealist Ball, Stoned Romans, and A Thousand Redwoods.
The Cult of Beauty and the Surreal World, a dual collection of wallpapers, fabrics, and rugs that earns its cohesiveness from its diversity, references many of Fulk’s favorite people and things. The broad range of inspiration for his patterns includes folklore, brutalism, surrealism, beloved dogs, flowers, redwood forests, ancient Rome, and Georgian and Neoclassical architecture. He simultaneously pays tribute to a number of esoteric creative spirits, including the English landscape designer Capability Brown, Joseph Albers, Salvador Dalí— whose legendary 1941 masked ball inspired the “Surrealist Ball” and “Surrealist Banquet” wallcoverings—and American painter Maynard Dixon, the spirit of whose vibrant landscapes of the west is conjured in the panoramic wallcovering “Sheltering Sky.”