Featured Artist: Amy Rice

Amy Rice is Plum Ruby Review's featured artist for our October/November 2004 issue. Her work is seemingly inspired in part by the Pop art movement of the 1960's and the graffiti movement of the 1980's. Rice's work provides Plum Ruby an opportunity to present an artist with clear influences from the movements mentioned. Rice also uses composition techniques that owe allegiances to Japanese printmaking. All of these elements make Rice's body of work spring to life with a beauty influenced by nature, childhood, Andy Warhol and Hokusai Katsushika.

Aspiring to Flight, 2003 hand cut stencil/ spray paint 4'x 4'

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Most of Amy Rice's work is created using spray paint and large plastic stencils that she designs and cuts herself. Often 3-4 different layers (each layer representing a different color) are needed to complete an image. She will sometimes cut a stencil of just an outline of an image and use watercolors, acrylics or house paint to color it in. Although this medium is basically a form of printmaking, she finds that she has the freedom to experiment with color, surface texture, and grouping of objects and thus mood and tone, making each piece unique. As an art instructor/advocate for adults with severe and persistent mental illness, Amy is a true believer in the powerful healing tool that art can be. Last year she wrote a grant for a website, Art Works At Spectrum, to display and promote their visual artwork (as well as to displace stigma associated with mental illness). She is inspired in her life and art by the struggles and successes of her clients. Amy is additionally inspired by the urban community in which she lives, childhood toys, vintage botanical prints, her dog Ella, bicycles, street art, and random found objects, collective endeavors that challenge hierarchy, acts of compassion, downright silliness and things with wings. To learn more about Amy, please visit her website, www.amyrice.com.