Amelia

#workinprogress portrait of Amelia

Name: Amelia

Occupation: Artist

Decade Born: 1950’s

Location: Connecticut

“Be generous.”

What inspires you?

Everything. *laughs* Well, a lot of ethnic art inspires me, primative art, Japanese design- that inspires me. Ancient art, buildings, and nature; leaves, and trees, and growth patterns, and lichen and everything.

I mean I take a walk- I did a residence a couple of weeks ago at the top of Mount Greylock, a place called Bascom Lodge. It was a week residency and I had a place to work and so I had a schedule where I went hiking for 2-3 hours every morning and then I came back and worked in the afternoons and it was wonderful. I got 3 meals a day- wonderful food- and I was on top of the world. I could see 360 from up to the green mountains and the Adirondacks so my studio had these incredible views.

When I went hiking, I said, ‘Oh this will be great. I’ll get a lot of exercise and the trails are pretty challenging, lots of hills and stuff’. I spent so much time photographing, and taking videos, and collecting things- I’d find a pod that I liked and then for my work I knew I’d need like a hundred of them so I’d spend an hour looking for that pod and then I’d find a downed tree…

This is what happened. I found a beach tree that was newly fallen and you’re not allowed to remove anything that’s alive so then I had to go back the next day with my loppers and pruning shears and then it was too hard to trek it out for 2 miles so I actually had to make the whole piece on the trail and cut it up so I knew how it’d lay out. So I ended up working in the woods for a couple hours and then I brought bungees so I strapped all the pieces to my backpack and hiked out with it.