The next generation of the figures in space.

Standing Figures - with Jacci Delaney and Zac Weinberg

Standing Figures- with Michael Mercil

3RD YEAR - of graduate school.

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My current research consists of deconstructing sex and gender.  I’m innately curious about sexual orientation and whether or not this is a given or something achieved through life experience. Through my own gaze as a woman I’m conducting artistic experiments through digital representation of my body.

            Gender is a type of “doing, “ as Judith Butler states it. There are many questions I’m rooting through such as, what does gender want? Does gender exist because of social norms? Does the outside world determine oneself? What is the materiality of the body? I strive to Challenge the norms of sexuality and gender through abjection and psychosis. Can I delegitimize “sex”? The ways in which I’m approaching this subject is by stripping the body of gender clues and denying them norms of our society. The images are larger than life with the largest figure standing at 8 feet tall.  This puts the gaze higher setting the figure in the position of power. The figures eyes stare back at you with intensity. I’m interested not specifically in the “male gaze”, or the “female gaze”, but questioning what is my “self gaze.” 

Summer Work- It's that Hunty Hunt

This is a new direction that I'm taking by using my image in addition to other materials and collaging them together. Better images to come...

 

 

Specific Tasks

This is a collaborative video/performance by both myself and Kristen Coburn. The title is Specific Tasks because we had two separate scores:

Kristen: Do work

Amy: Fill it

These scores were our only limitation and the video was born out of those restrictions.

Materials used: 25lb bags of flour, random tools, glass bottles and jars.

Here is a link to the video, but its best displayed the way it looks in the picture below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkVwHajUv8 

Installation view

Video still

  

Video still

Post-performance images

 

 

In the Dark: Rooms to Let Temporary Art Space

In the Dark imagines the possibility of art in total darkness, positing that not all work can or should be witnessed through incandescent light, or even light at all. Each artist involved is provided with a single room, a designation for site-specific installations and performances.

On this one-night exhibition, the public will be provided with a single flashlight upon entering. Attendees will peruse the dark house, encountering choreographed dance, melancholy drumming, and art strung from the ceiling.   ---> http://roomstolettemporaryartspace.com

 I chose a bathroom and a bedroom to create site specific installations in. I had to work in complete darkness for the installation using flashlights to see what I was painting.

Me and Myself: bathroom Installation

Title: Black and Light: Stripes were cut out of center of body to create a striping light.

A light shines through the figure reflecting light on to the viewer and onto the wall opposite.

the reflecting light from figure on opposite wall.

REVIEW : The Double Deuce

These are images from my review (second semester of the second year) I have one more year to go and I'm feeling really energized my the new language of materials that I've been working with. I would love to hear any feedback or answer any questions about the work.

Statement: 

            Uncontrollable impulses happen when someone sees blood and becomes weak at the knees, or gags when they taste or smell something terrible. Creating discomfort that can linger within the viewer changes their state of mind and pushes them outside their comfort zone.  When the viewer becomes estranged from their body it leads them to a new way of experiencing and evaluating their own experiences of being a body.  

            I’m also beginning to delve into the space of gender division and begin to reflect on my life experiences.  I grew up in a middle to lower class mobile home park. Mobile or “modular” neighborhoods become their own entity and from my experience attract a specific group of people mostly with low incomes and large families. I grew up as a tomboy rejecting gender, as it didn’t have much importance to me. I would cut bows off my hand-me-down clothing and wore only sweat pants and black sneakers for a majority of my childhood. Memories are resurfacing and finding meaning within the objects and fragments that I’m creating. Fast everyday materials have become essential to my process of making, which relates to the makeshift home full of quick fixes and dirt. I feel it has begun to ground the work physically and mentally allowing for my forms to take shape. Working through materials that are at hand begins to build a library of interchangeable components in which to pull from.  It’s through these tactile materials the abjection of gender becomes blended into the uncanny.

View of space

Assemblages

 

 

 

R.U.R.

 Soap Factory: Located in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Kimberly Ellen Greene and Amy Ritter work with ceramics and blown glass: Greene with hand-made objects that mimic the reproducible industrial atom, while Ritter’s glass sculptures create from the human form in ways that are both obvious and willfully obscure. - Ben Heywood

There were over 350 people at the opening, lots of great conversations happened between artists and the public. I must give thanks to my awesome entourage which consisted of Emily Mcbride and Hannah Miller for helping to install, take pictures, and being supportive - thanks friends!

This is one of the three forms I used in the show.

  

The entire piece was titled "You know, when you put the thing inside the thing"

People wanted to touch and some did.

I love the girl in the blue jackets expression!

What do you see? The materials are glass, lard, and wood.

I was interviewed and this will be available soon on the Soap factories website. www.soapfactory.com