The Curator's Eye

Selected by Erik Hall, director, Hallway Gallery

1969, collage and oils on wood, 36 x 72 inches

I met Amy while shopping for a bed — she was working as a designer in a furniture store. I found out she moved to downtown Bellevue from Portland just a few years ago and that she was also an artist, working in oils. Honestly, I didn’t care for her stuff at the time, as it looked pretty commercial. But I saw something in it that led me to believe she knew how to move paint around.

The turning point in Amy’s work was significant; she went on a ten-month trip around the world. While in Buenos Aires, she became interested in newspapers because the headlines read differently than they did in the States. She started to collect clippings and rip them up and reassemble them. Then she would paint over them, leaving some of the details of the collage behind. Because she was traveling, she had to work really small and really fast. That resulted in her doing more impulsive work. And that impulsiveness, I think, is now her strength.

My favorite of her most recent work is 1969. The story behind it is kind of funny. She traded a painting with a client that she knew for a collection of Playboy magazines from 1969 (not a bad year for the mag; issues featured Bill Cosby, Allen Ginsberg and Brigitte Bardot). While flipping through pages, she was really moved by how much things have changed — what types of things are advertised, what is considered beautiful. And, as before, she ripped them all up and readdressed them in a painting.

The nuance of Amy’s work is that you appreciate it at a distance by seeing it in its entirety. But when you get close to it you start to pick out information: headlines, pictures, advertisements. You see that the color comes from the underlying collage as much as it does from the paint. — E.H.