Beyond the Page: Amy Finkbeiner
Amy Finkbeiner is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist and Sketchbook Project 2010 participant, working across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, photography and video. Inspired by sexuality, religion and gender, Finkbeiner explores rituals, objects, the body and storytelling through a variety of mediums. Read on below to learn more about Amy’s current practice and where the artist is finding inspiration and motivation to create during present times.
Tell us about yourself!
My name is Amy Finkbeiner. I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and spent the first 20 years of my life there until enrolling at the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri. After graduating with a BFA in Painting, I backpacked around Europe before returning to my hometown for a while to live, work, and paint. I began my love affair with New York in September 1997, fully relocating here and finally landing at the School of Visual Arts, where I received a MFA and a couple lifetimes of student loan debt in 2001.
I still love New York. We’ve been through a lot together. I’m not leaving.
When were you first introduced to art? How has your art evolved over the years?
I always loved painting and drawing as a very small child. I also loved stories and story-telling and creating rich imaginary lives. I was raised catholic so some of my earliest memories are of paintings, statues, prayer missals, and bibles, which happened to also be replicas of some of the great works of European art history--Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, etc. I also had an uncle who worked at the Vatican during the 1950’s and brought back a lot of art and paraphernalia from Rome which he distributed to the whole family. Although I’m not at all religious now--in fact I’m pretty anti-religion--the Southern Gothic and gold leaf clutter aesthetics are still there and I still love it.
These days I consider myself to be a multi-disciplinary artist. Over the years painting and drawing were supplemented with collage, assemblage, found objects, sculpture, and installation; then came photography and video documentations of actions/performances;
and at long last in 2012 I applied to ITINERANT Performance Art Festival, curated by Hector Canonge, who asked me to perform live. I was so terrified I almost said no, but then I jumped in and did it and fell immediately in love. I felt I’d come back to an early 80s DIY innocence that I’d been longing for and simultaneously a whole new world had opened up. I saw that collaboration with other artists and collaborative storytelling felt more crucial and meaningful than my singular voice, which led me into acting and singing. Everything is on the table. Thrilling.
When did you participate in the Sketchbook Project? What was that process like for you?
I sent in a sketchbook in 2010. I made the sketchbook partly from things I already had going and partly from things created on the spot. I’ve always loved sketchbooks and have many around dating back to high school. More recently it feels like my whole apartment (including my studio) is a sketchbook. I make “notes” on the walls using any materials or words that I want to have at easy recall. I also seem to use my phone camera and notes app for this. I’ve often worked with accidental processes and found juxtapositions, so I record them as quickly as possible. Now I want to compile it all into a book...
What mediums do you primarily work in now? How do these mediums relate to each other and to the concepts in your work?
Right now I’m concentrating on acting, storytelling, and performance. I want to work in other artists’ theatre and film projects and also collaborate to create content. This feels like a natural extension of all of my artwork, coming out of the rituals of making, the rituals of viewing and participating, and the presence and use of my own body in my work.
What are sources of inspiration for the subject matter in your work?
I’m inspired by literally anything touching on sexuality, gender, and religion. Also plants, flowers, and herbs used in midwifery, birth control, and abortifacients. Altars and shrines of all kinds. Silent film stars. Glitter.
Can you explain the significance of rituals in your work and your artistic process? What is your relationship to object-making and relics and/or ritual offerings?
Rituals are constantly present in my daily life in myriad ways, which comes from my aforementioned early childhood religious indoctrination. Sometimes my daily rituals appear as gratitude offerings, or superstitious warding-off of troubles, or love and sex charms. I’m frequently engaged throughout the day in small chains of talismanic actions, gestures, and words, often with focal objects in impromptu altar compositions, that have occurred to me intuitively but that certainly touch upon many ancient forms of spiritual practices. This has long since spilled over into my artwork. Or perhaps my artwork just spilled over into my daily practices. Not sure which.
How do you use incantations, or the act of chanting in your work? What inspires the words/texts you choose to recite?
Incantations show up everywhere for me, in random moments of reading and listening and also in the constant inner narrator in my brain.
How have present circumstances impacted you creatively?
I’m not even sure yet how these months have impacted my creative process. Although I believe that artmaking is more important than ever, it also feels like everything else is so urgent and life-threatening for so many people. I was really really lucky in that my unemployment kicked in right away and my job through the scenic painters’ union was prepared with a lot of assistance, so things have been reasonably stable for me personally. But the loss, grief, fear, and anxiety have been truly dreadful, and knowing that everyone was suffering with all of it was often paralyzing. That is still playing out all around us and inside us. There is an awful lot about the art world that doesn’t feel very important or relevant to me in this moment (and probably forever). The art world feels like a microcosm of our culture: White supremacist, racist, classist, patriarchal, misogynist, tyrannically heteronormative, ableist, and hopelessly mired in deadly capitalist crap.
I am looking towards collaborative storytelling projects, theatre, short films, and series. I’m looking towards stories and voices that have been suppressed. I’ve been taking acting and singing classes for the past two years, and have continued that via zoom during these months. I am working on writing screenplays/stories, although that’s gone very slowly and torturously. I am involved in collaborative writing and performance projects with other artists and performers as well.
In terms of art-making, I’ve been installing all my previous artwork and configuring a new studio after moving into a new apartment last year, which is still very much feeding my collage/altar/ritual needs.
One thing I’ve made during the quarantine is a project I call “Covid-19 Hair Pillow,” which is an ongoing collection ritual of the astounding amount of hair I’ve shed while quarantined in my apartment, harvested daily from the vacuum, my hair brush, drains...wherever it collects. I’m not yet sure what the parameters are for this project. For now it’s just me and my hair cooped up in the apartment.
Covid19 Hair Pillow, March 14, 2020
My hair, harvested from brushes, drains, floor sweepings, and at-home haircuts during quarantine
How can people support your work?
I’d just like to see support and amplification for all the voices that have been there all along but haven’t been listened to yet because they don’t fit into a thus far very narrow system.