Amanda Guest: Inhabit
My work emerges from the experience of growing up in homes designed by my father, a British modernist architect. The formal language I inhabited and the experiences in those spaces formed the basis of my artistic vocabulary.
Development of imagery may be incremental or impulsive. Some works are part of a series, marking time, while others are unique, allowing collaged shapes to move into abstraction. They explore rigidity and fluidity, movement within and away from the grid. Pages are spaces/sites inhabited by lines traced by thread, cut paper, paper pulp, and pencil.
Collaboration with Dieu Donne Papermill has allowed me to use the papermaking process to investigate these impulses, to embed lines in sheets as they are made, or allow the paper to sculpt itself as it dries against restraint. In an installation, paper “pieces” are collaged directly on the wall, in dialog with the architectural space. The imagery moves through grid systems to idiosyncratic drawings, referring to existence within those beautiful, monochrome, light-filled spaces; the paper pages are surrogates for sites of experience.
About the Artist:
Amanda Guest was born in London, England, received a BA from Harvard College in Visual and Environmental Studies in 1987 and moved to NYC to attend the New York Studio School. Guest’s practice spans drawing, handmade paper, collage, embroidery, sculpture, and site-specific wall works. She collaborated as an artist at Dieu Donne Papermill for a decade, creating handmade paper works and working on limited edition artist books. Her work is held in public and private collections including Museum of Modern Art, Fogg Art Museum, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, and Birmingham Art Gallery. Guest has exhibited at The Drawing Center, Brooke Alexander Gallery, 123 Watts Gallery, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Specht Harpman Architects, Kristen Federickson Fine Art, among other galleries and institutions; she is a recipient of a NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking, Drawing, Artist’s Books. Guest has worked with young creative artists at ArtsConnection in non-profit arts education and exhibitions since 2010.
