Curatorial Statement

Talismanic: The Collected Collages of Amy Sacksteder presents four collage series created by the artist over the course of 8 years. The work marks time in Amy’s traveled landscapes and artist’s gaze.

Amy is a painter and a collector: Her gaze connects to her innate sense of color, texture, layering, and the materiality of the landscapes around her. So much of her visual inspiration comes directly from the sanctuary of her home, both inside with its remnants of daily life (Amazon boxes, styrene packaging, familial detritus) and outside with its perennial gardens, stone walkways, and the many treasures that nature provides in the form of smoothed stones and seed pods.

A visit to Amy’s studio is experiential and visually beautiful. Trained as a painter, one can draw lines from an in-progress paint palette waiting on a table to her pattern-filled remnant collections paused in various arrangements to her formally white-framed artwork. The catch here is that all are works of art; all can be interpreted as comments on a life of observation filtered through an artist’s gaze.

The four collages series presented in the A2AC Spotlight Gallery include Echo Keepers (2021), Time Ghosts (2019-2020), Grounded/Ungrounded (2019), and Generations (2015).

Photo by Abby Rosenbaum

Amy Sacksteder

Website | Instagram

A2AC Opening Reception

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 6–8 pm

Ann Arbor Art Center
117 W. Liberty St., Ann Arbor, MI

Join us for the opening night of Talismanic: The Collected Collages of Amy Sacksteder. The collection marks the time in Amy’s life: Her children’s early years, the Covid-19 pandemic, and other significant narratives.

The artist will be in attendance.

Free