Trained in Ceramics, AMY SANTOFERRARO applies the spirit of that medium, which she says is "best at masquerading as other things," to whatever materials attract her attention: plastic, pool noodles, wood aluminum, foam. Her own inclination to collect informs her work in a variety of media as she tackles the themes of nostalgia, attachment, desire, value and imitation. Amy has a Bachelors of Arts Education and a Bachelors of Fine Art from The Ohio State University (1998-2004). She earned her Masters of Fine Art in Ceramics from Alfred University in 2012. She has had solo exhibitions at The Clay Studio (2009) in Philadelphia, c.r.e.t.a. rome (2013) in Italy and Add to Basket will open at MudFire in Decatur, Georgia in May 2015. She is a 2015 Spring McKnight Resident Artist at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis and will give a lecture on her work on Tuesday, April 21, 2015 at 6:30 pm in NCC’s Library. Amy teaches Ceramics at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, where she lives.
OtherPeoplesPixels: Ceramics as a medium is intimately connected to the history of the vessel, which is really the history of human progress. I'd like to hear you muse on vessels in general, in ceramics, in your life or in your practice.
Amy Santoferraro: At the risk of sounding like Miley Cyrus. . .
vessels hold stuff, and stuff makes up our world. The vessel strongly
influences my work because my practice revolves around ideas of
collection and the questioning of value and sentiments associated with
stuff we choose to surround ourselves with.
The vessel was my
first entry into ceramics. I fell in love with creating a useful object
that had a built-in guideline: if it holds water and you can drink out
of it, you have succeeded! The cup remains present in my practice as a
way to get the work out of the studio and into hands. I always make a
“take away” or a smaller more practical, more attainable object that
represents the larger work but can fit in your hand or not break your
wallet.
One of my grad students recently reminded me of possibly
the first use of clay to form a vessel, in which woven baskets were
lined with clay to transport water from stream to home. In the BaskeTREE
series I like to believe that I am quite literally flipping that idea
on its head. Vintage and modern day baskets have been translated into
plastic and flipped upside down to hold the now all-important junk we
need for survival. . . more plastic relics of our existence.
Although I am reluctant to admit it, I am very thankful for Peter Voulkus,
who was the first ceramist to buck the system and have his way with the
vessel. He fought this battle 60 years ago and his work represents a
sustained victory for all ceramists. Now we can both embrace and reject
the idea of the vessel. That said, there is nothing sadder than an
ironic teapot, but nothing quite as ballsy as a not-pot in contemporary
ceramics (of course there are fantastic exceptions to this idea).
OPP: The B.B. Baskets are so seductive. I like the malleability of those simple orbs. They can be so many things: marbles, berries, bubbles. What are they for you? Are the baskets themselves found ceramics?
AS: You nailed it! Sometimes the balls are just balls. But they are also bubbles, fruit, wishes, vomit, bubbling crud, excuses. . . pretty much anything that can build up to be overwhelming, disgusting and/or beautiful. The found baskets in this series fulfill my need to collect evidence of ceramics doing what it does best: masquerading as other objects and materials. One thing mimicking another due to nostalgia or sentiment rather than function or design, or skeuomorphism, is a huge part of my work and practice. I like to think of it as "materials behaving badly." The materials or objects at home depot, the thrift store, or in my studio are kinda like Girls Gone Wild: they reveal too much, are too fake and are too cheap. The B.B Baskets are an ongoing quest; I am always on the look out for small ceramic baskets and new B.B. colors.
OPP: What inspired this series?
AS: They started innocently enough as just airsoft BBs in a
basket. My home is across a valley from Fort Riley, Kansas. The Kansas
landscape mimics that of Afghanistan and Iraq in color and flatness,
making it an ideal training ground for soldiers at the Army base before
they head off to war. Everyday I hear and feel the rounds of firing and
bombing practice while watching the neighborhood kids shoot each other
with BB guns in the convenient overgrown bush hides of my yard. It is
quite possibly the most surreal thing I have ever repeatedly
experienced.
I started collecting the BBs the kids left in the
yard without any clear direction other than picking up and collecting
the beautiful balls of color. The collection grew as the days passed,
and I gradually began seeing them as material. I love that they can be
so many things and don’t readily volunteer their origin story. It’s not
essential to appreciate the resulting object and in no way is a
statement about war or only a personal narrative.
2012 MFA Thesis Exhibition
at Alfred University feels like a well-designed, but nonfunctional
playground. Tell us about how you conceived of and developed this
project? AS: Again nailed it! I was thinking a lot about yards (which is now kinda wild considering the above story was two years after my thesis exhibition). Yards act as an outward expression to the world about the people who maintain them. Many of the objects featured it the exhibition are my recreation of objects you might find in yards: mailboxes, bunny hutches, decorative wagon wheels, that old camper that won’t travel and festive displays of unnecessary motion and lights.
OPP: What about your inclusion of non-ceramic materials?
AS:
Ceramics is never the only solution. My relationship with the material
is best described as complicated or open. At times I am in love with it
and am exclusive, but far too often I am lured by other materials
because they are so very different and will never offer what clay or the
ceramic surface can. In many cases I reconcile my devotion to the
material because it’s what I know best and can cheaply and effectively
manipulate it to work for me. There was a great fear before grad school
of wasting or ruining rare, vintage, limited or oddly sourced materials
because they are the complete opposite of clay, which is cheap and
plentiful. This exhibition was the first time that I let those old
hang-ups go. Nothing is precious in ceramics; breakages and surprises
are plenty. I have found the same to be true with other materials. Bendy
straws can be unbent. My sensitivity and ability to fearlessly adopt
any material is a result of embracing the heavily process-oriented
nuances that ceramics demand and my unwavering curiosity and desire to
make everything work for me. I’m a boss.
OPP: BaskeTREE (2012) is a series of
bonsai-like sculptures in bright, luscious colors. Each one seems to be
a mini monument to visual pleasure. Have you ever cultivated an actual
bonsai tree? How is your practice like this ancient Japanese practice?
AS: BaskeTREEs
are personal landscapes. I think of them as executive desk attire and
hope that they may replace mini zen gardens, finger labyrinths or those
clanky ball thingies. BaskeTREEs are maintenance free houseplants
but can still die. They are the longing for something to care for but
not really. I am an avid succulent keeper and realize it’s easy. Bonsai
might be next, but it’s a big commitment, like owning a parrot that
could possibly outlive you. I am currently the heir apparent to an
African Grey parrot.
BaskeTREEs are marketed and sold
separately as floral arrangements. They are temporal in nature because
they employ a wide variety of delicate and non-archival materials (Will floam
ever die? Maybe it’ll lose its clumping quality over time. Who knows?)
By using plastic, ceramic, aluminum, foam, and a variety of other
materials interchangeably, I represent our disregarded and discarded
junk as carefully organized and reconsidered, encouraging the
celebration and questioning of a possible shelf life attached to an item
for sale in a gallery. Acceptance, recognition, imitation and
appropriation of these gleaned objects and materials allow a new
identity to develop, a new sentiment that is a nod to the past, a charge
to the future and highlights our need and affection for objects and
materials. It is no coincidence that I lean towards stuff of little to
no value. I beg these materials to acknowledge and engage their own
artificiality and actively retain a bit of apathy in their new debut.
OPP: I love what you say in your artist statement about collections: "Collections are spectacularly selfish satisfactions that are classless and limitless. Rich, snooty museum collectors in search of obscure works of art and unemployed QVC shoppers looking for one more crystal unicorn are essentially doing the same thing as me; strategically collecting objects to organize and make sense of our surroundings through interactions with the material world." I couldn't agree more. Why do you think our society primarily raises the first up as valuable and denigrates the second as wasteful?
AS: Oh man, this is a big one to tackle. I think it really
comes down to the fact that money trumps feelings. Or maybe that money
is measurable and feelings are not. I came a cross a beautiful passage The Sportsman’s Complete Book of Trophy and Meat Care as a young artist, and it has shaped how I think about the questionable value of objects and feelings.
"Men
collect all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. Some dote on fine
art because they have developed a very special hunger for beauty that
can be satisfied only by being around or by owning, great pictures.
Others collect the very same pictures purely as a financial investment.
Paintings, sculpture, artifacts and all manner of other items in limited
supply (some of which make a reasonable man shake his head and retire
to a corner to contemplate) have been used as currency hedges in recent
years.
The point, rather, is that when you actually lay it out
and analyze it, practically all of our most commonly accepted collecting
hobbies have less reason than that of trophy collecting by the hunter
or fisherman. That’s because the sportsman is commemorating a very
special moment. . .” (Tom Brakefield, The Sportsman’s Complete Book of Trophy and Meat Care)
OPP: Do you remember your first collection? Do you have a collection that has nothing to do with your art-practice?
AS: My first collection was "shoe poison," better known as gel silica packets. I kept records of each pair of shoes that helped contribute to my coveted collection of gel silica. Diagrams, dates of purchase, sizes, colors and materials were all meticulously cataloged. Only my best friends were invited into my top-secret laboratory/closet to view it and hear of my somewhat sinister plans to poison bad guys.
I keep a couples collection, but only add to it when I'm in a relationship. I collect ceramic dogs, but only if they are black, white or a combination of both. I collect commemorative plates, but only if they are already outfitted with a hanging device. Every collection has a caveat otherwise it'd be completely out of control. Carefully chosen and organized collecting lets me believe that I am a collector and not a hoarder.
To see more of Amy's work, please visit amysantoferraro.com.
Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent exhibitions include solo shows I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, as well as Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, at Design Cloud in Chicago (2014). Most recently, Stacia created When Things Fall Apart, a durational, collage installation in the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center. Closing reception guests were invited to help break down the piece by pulling pins out of the wall.