Amy explores how to unpack intense environmental stresses combined with a teacher’s compassion fatigue into art that can be soft and tranquil or bold and intense. She creates images of the life around her as she sees it using the material nearby, usually a cell phone. From that photo, she typically falls back on the opportunity to use her hands in rhythmic time to sew as a creative outlet.

Her research-based art practice draws upon the ideas of foundations and necessity. Cotton, wool, silk, and gold are historically the most treasured and pure materials used in the decorative arts. Amy uses these symbolically to build her images. For years she taught others to make art with only the most basic materials and use them until they were exhausted. Make more with less has been an unrelenting motto both as a teacher and artist. With that comes the creative constraints that motivate every artist.

In her recent work, observational sketching forms the structural framework for her sewn landscapes, while photography informs her exploration of color. Finding respite in traveling and experiencing new spaces, Amy captures her environment through photography to later develop linear design as the first marks made on cloth as if she were outside creating sketches on paper with pencil. Choosing materials for her work is based on the color that is digitally developed in her photographs and then made up of silk organza, silk threads, wool threads, and goldwork. Lines are expressive, and materials are stripped, ragged, stretched, and torn. Breaking the norms of the traditional lessons of embroidery, Amy finds enjoyment in re-establishing the materials as the necessities of identity for what she sees in her environment.

Amy received her M.F.A. in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design under the direction of Vanessa Platacis, Stephen Knudsen and Christopher Williams and mentored by Dr. Candace Stout of The Ohio State University. Amy also earned a MA in Education, a BA in Art Education and has held a teaching license in the State of Ohio for over thirty years. All that time was spent in one public school district in central Ohio. She looks forward to what the future brings as she hopes to create art on a regular basis.