Amy Archambault


Crown (2016)
                Moulding, latex enamel, pine, carpet, caulk guns, hardware
                63 x 134 x 70 inches

Artist Statement

The structural properties of wood and the value it possesses as a constructive and decorative material is essential to my investigation of fabricated objects, my creation of “play-things”, and the influence of a renovation-obsessed-culture on contemporary living. Adapting the role of the “renovator” in recent years, my visual lexicon has been saturated by the objects, tools, and equipment we acquire as “homeowners” and / or “home-improvers”. I have absorbed a great deal of knowledge about the builder’s space, the materials and objects that are associated with that space, and the many methods of fabrication, assembly, and finishing. Wood, the “go-to” material of my past chiefly for its structural dependency, has recently shifted into a source for expression, description and imitation. As one consumed by labor, better known to me as “the project”, I search for adventure and delight by imagining visual and functional connections between a given task and the toys and games that defined my childhood. This nostalgic and oddly educational connection, synonymous to the way that a child engages in “pretend”, transforms the shop into my stage, my practice into “play”, and wood into my most adaptable prop.



 Biography

Amy Archambault received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, PA and BA in Studio Art | Psychology from the College of the Holy Cross, MA. Archambault's large-scale installations, sculptures and inspective mixed media drawings uncover playful and unconventional activations of sites and structures. Her complex and energetic installations incorporate both the material and the visual languages of athletic culture, childhood play and the "home improvement" / constructive domain.

Recipient of the 2013 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant (Sculpture / Installation) and member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery, MA, Archambault has exhibited her work throughout the Northeast. Archambault was most recently named the Boston Center for the Arts Artist in Residence. Her public interactive installation "inMotion: Memories of Invented Play" was featured on the Boston Center for the Arts Plaza (Summer 2015) and earned her recognition in the Boston Globe. In addition, Archambault participated in the ambitious "Isles Arts Initiative" (Summer 2015) with her work being installed in Fort Warren (Georges Island, Boston Harbor Islands, Boston, MA). Archambault's installation "Futile Ascent" was featured in a group exhibition of faculty artists, "Pulse", at the College of the Holy Cross, MA and additionally at GRIN Providence, RI. Prior, her installation, "Live-work", was featured in a solo exhibition at 17 Cox, Beverly, MA in 2014. Archambault was recognized in Pulse Magazine for its "Up & Coming Local Artists" outlook in Central Massachusetts, 2012. She is currently Studio Supervisor / Lecturer at the College of the Holy Cross, MA.


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