Keyboard
Amanda M. Smith received a BFA in Ceramics from Bowling Green State University and an MFA in Spatial Arts from San Jose State University. She was formerly an Art and Ceramics teacher at Irvington High School in Fremont, California, but now is a practicing artist and stay at home mom. Amanda loves collecting small things, making art, and reading. Amanda currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and two children.
My work is a series of illustrated fables drawn from personal experience and observation. In these narratives I investigate questions of hierarchies, sociology and moral agency. The little girls that inhabit these pieces are the product of my experience growing up in an ultra-fem household with my mom and three sisters.
My penchant for flat painting as well as the stylization of elements in my work comes from my love of historic religious narrative painting the world over, most notably Persian, Mughal and Rajasthani Indian manuscript and miniature paintings. Part of my working process includes appropriating decorative elements from these various art historical sources and adapting them to suit my own aesthetic sensibilities.
Painting with ceramic mediums has allowed me to make archival, singular, handmade art objects. This has become increasingly important to me as everything from communication to clothing in contemporary culture is becoming ephemeral, mass-produced and/or disposable. Additionally, ceramics offers a unique palette of surfaces and textures. Employing traditional decorative techniques like decaling, sprigging, lustering, and china painting has afforded my work a classically ceramic, candy-coated aesthetic that can sometimes be subverted by the content of the work.”