Amy Santoferraro, born in Akron, Ohio, is the progeny of a carpenter and retailer. She received her M.F.A in Ceramic Art from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York in 2012. Amy earned her B.A.E (Art Education) and her B.F.A (Ceramics) from The Ohio State University In 2004. While at Ohio State, Amy was an apprentice and Undergraduate Research Scholar. Amy has been a Summer Resident and Studio Manger at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine and now serves on the advisory board. Amy was a Resident Artist at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, in Gatlinburg Tennessee and a four year Resident Artist at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Amy was awarded a McKnight Residency Grant for Ceramic Artists in a partnership through the McKnight Foundation and The Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was the Ceramics Area Coordinator and an Assistant Professor of Art at Kansas State University. Amy was the Spring 2017 Visiting Instructor in Residence at Oregon College of Arts and Craft in Portland, Oregon and the Program Manager, MFA Applied Craft and Design (OCAC/PNCA) in Portland, Oregon. Amy is currently the Joan and David Lincoln Visiting Professor at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.

Statement

As a kid I secretly collected “shoe poison”. 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 catalogued in my Holly Hobby notebook. Only my Best Friends were invited to my top-secret laboratory/closet to view it and hear of my somewhat sinister plans to poison bad guys.

The collection remains my playground. Collections are spectacularly selfish satisfactions that are classless and limitless. Rich museum collectors in search of obscure works of art and unemployed QVC shoppers dialing in a hundredth 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. Through these interactions I hope to further understand the need and affection for objects and ideas that questionably perpetuate the commemoration of places, feelings, and people.

Objects become charged with meaning, history, sentiment, and the authority to tell stories as I rowdily rummage through thrift stores, dollar stores, hobby stores, and hardware stores seeking objects and materials, whose usefulness has been exhausted or underutilized and await a new imagined life. I carefully handpick and catalogue objects and materials that are familiar or boast a degree of promise and beauty to me. I put objects and stories together piece by piece, relentlessly tinkering with objects and ideas until they fit and work in a way that is very mine. After all, I am the boss of them. Narratives, both personal and adopted third person, slip into and then take over the work. I am attracted and magically repulsed by the insertion and “standardized personalization” of remembrance and celebration feted in kitsch and souvenir vernacular. I beg these ideas and objects to buck-up; acknowledge and engage their own artificiality.