Amal Tamari ( she/her/hers )

My work weaves together personal history, cultural heritage, and the intimate beauty of the everyday. I try to capture the magic of everyday objects by recreating moments in time- particularly of domestic life. Beyond comfort in the mundane, my work also takes these objects and transforms them into items of reappreciation. I represent objects from daily domestic life- chairs, lightbulbs, fruits, ladders- on my pots as still lifes of memories. A chair is a symbol for sitting together, fruit is a symbol for a shared meal, and ladders lead back to a specific memory of working in my garage with my dad. They capture a moment in time spent with those I love the most.

That I am Palestinian strongly influences the objects I draw and am drawn to. Not in the least, oranges and keys. My drawings are, in a sense, acts of rematriation. Oranges in my work reference the Palestinian city,  Jaffa, where my sedo or paternal grandfather is from, a city famous for its orange groves. Keys, on the other hand,  are a symbol of return to Palestine, as many Palestinians were forced to flee their homes but hung onto their house keys. They serve as images of restoration and recollection in ways that make my pots more intimate across everyday life beyond and within historical time.

I opt to pinch and coil build each pot, as I like spending time with each section of the vessel. I leave all of my fingerprints and coil seams embedded in the surface of the clay. I enjoy that the viewer can place their finger where mine once was, like a fossil of my building process. Making pottery offers me a way to connect with the every day to an even fuller extent. I gravitate towards making functional work because when people use my work, it feels like I am contributing to their everyday life, the very same sphere I am trying to capture in my drawings.

Amal Tamari (she/her) is a Palestinian-American craftsperson living in Philadelphia, PA. Amal received her BA in Studio Art with a focus in Ceramics at Earlham College in 2022. She was a 2025 Multicultural Fellow at NCECA and a Core Fellow at Penland School of Craft from 2023 to 2025. Amal is currently an Associate Artist at The Clay Studio of Philadelphia. Much of Amal’s work is inspired by her childhood home in the Midwest and her travels to the Middle East, weaving together personal history, cultural heritage, and the intimate beauty of the every day. Amal makes recreations of moments in time, specifically focusing on the domestic still life. Her still lifes act as symbols for memories. A chair is a symbol of sitting together around a table, fruit is a symbol of a shared meal, and a key is a symbol of her Palestinian heritage. Much of her practice is ceramics-based, but she also utilizes wood and textiles to expand her visual language.