Amy Dooley

I have always wanted to work with pottery and other than a class in high school, always let other things get in the way. In early 2020 I took some classes for a few weeks from a local production potter and mostly focused on handbuilding. Once the pandemic was in full swing I hit the pause button once again. I focused on some handbuilding at home and got a small wheel for Christmas that year. I stared at it for months. Once I got settled in the gallery space and had a few shows behind me, I started to learn to throw. I watched countless YouTube videos and have been experimenting with many techniques.

For this show, I focused on using sodium silicate to form a dry hard skin on a wet piece and then stretch it on the wheel. This technique creates a textured surface similar to the texture on tree bark that is also created by the stretching of the outer surface as the tree grows.

Trees hold so much story, history, and importance to the survival of our planet. I have often photograhed and drawn them through the years but this technique has allowed me to think more about their structure and growth and how processes in nature often mimic themselves in different organic and inorganic matter. — Amy Dooley

Amy Dooley is a graphic designer and photographer. She loves to explore the world and photograph landscapes and abstracts. She is drawn to nature and scenery that has an other-worldly quality working with digital cameras both traditional and infrared. Amy’s work comes through a lens of appreciation for nature and the environment and her knowledge that without a healthy planet there is no life.

Throughout her life, Amy has dabbled different media for her creative endeavors. She has worked with traditional modalities like paper and paint, she has worked with fiber and metal, and more recently glass mosaic, concrete, and ceramic.

Studio 89 came together during the pandemic. It was difficult to work from home with two college-age kids around, one of which is a painter who does large-scale work. Amy and her daughter Chloe Mosbacher went looking for some studio space and found a building for sale. She and her partner Stefan Bolz decided to buy the building and open a space for Amy and Chloe to work on projects, share them with their communities, and support other artists as well.