In 2018, Pullen participated in the CAFKA, a biannual, free public exhibition of contemporary art in the cities and surrounding areas of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. For CAFKA.18, Pullen produced a mural, titled Recognize Everyone, that covers the elevator shaft and the wraparound fire escape on the building of 27 Gaukel Street in Kitchener. The polychromatic star mural work is an immersive art work, that visitors can walk into as they climb the stairs of the building. In her series Interval for Halifax, Pullen wrapped playground swings in Scotchlite tape. Visitors interact with the work by playing on the swings. The artist suggests photographing the swings in action, using flash, in order to experience the work fully. "The swing is in reflective material, in a certain moment it looks like a line of light, as if someone is riding a bolt of lightning." The use of silver reappears throughout Pullen's work. Examples include, a silver print of the artist in a reflective silver skirt Flash, 1999; a series of drawings made on metallic paper Portal, 2002; and a rope sculpture covered in the same light-sensitive Scotchlite material called The Thing, 2003; and Ladder and Ladders, both 2003, which also involve the eponymous being covered in Scotchlite material. Pullen's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery, Artspeak, The Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Metropole and Eye Level Gallery. She has exhibited with Thread Collective, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Helen Pitt Gallery, Beaver College, Optica, and St. Mary's University Art Gallery. Her works were included in survey The Festival of Independents, Tate Modern, How Soon is Now, Vancouver Art Gallery, Ten by Twenty, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Art Papers, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Crossover projects include 100 Closest Stars with Stuart Lynn in Brooklyn, The Perfect Solids with Professor Pat Keast in the Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics at Dalhousie University in Halifax and The Cloud Chamber with Dr. Justin Albert and the Dept. of Physics & Astronomy; a freestanding detector-sculpture for viewing cosmic rays in real time with the naked eye.
Style
Her work has a playfulness and directness that opens it up to any viewer. It can be critically linked to conceptualism, and to a NSCAD trend to use unusual materials to make metaphysical points, but it is not necessary to know a secret art language to understand or enjoy it. Her work is marked by conceptual ambition, technical daring, and antic humor. Pullen's work is built on paradox. While her work varies dramatically in its final form, an analytical orientation can be isolated as a unifying thread throughout her recent work. Product and invention never seem to be the point. Discovery, arising from the process of creation and destruction, does. Preoccupied with changing the points of reference that box art in as art, she calls attention to the artistic potential within everyday experience.
