"Society must accept some things as real; but [the artist] must always know that visible reality hides a deeper one, and that all our action and achievement rest on things unseen. A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven. One cannot possibly build a school, teach a child, or drive a car without taking some things for granted. The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides."
- James Baldwin, The Creative Process, 1962
Amanda Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist from rural Northern California. Her artistic practice spans a variety of mediums including sculpture, photography, video, painting, sound, and the written word, but first and foremost, she is a scavenger. She seeks the holiness in the discarded and forgotten, and to remember that all of the materials in our human environments were either grown or extracted from the earth. There is no separation.
Thomas' practice is driven by the detritus of society and, in addition to scavenged conventional materials, she works a plethora of unorthodox components including items pulled from dumpsters, household trash, soil samples, long-expired photographic materials, dentistry tools, co-opted advertisements, sampled sounds, acid mine drainage, and pieces of her own body.
Thomas' artistic practice revolves around questions about the human animal's place in the interdependent community of life on Earth, and her place in our society. Her work resides at an intersection between her personal life and the larger world.
- James Baldwin, The Creative Process, 1962
Amanda Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist from rural Northern California. Her artistic practice spans a variety of mediums including sculpture, photography, video, painting, sound, and the written word, but first and foremost, she is a scavenger. She seeks the holiness in the discarded and forgotten, and to remember that all of the materials in our human environments were either grown or extracted from the earth. There is no separation.
Thomas' practice is driven by the detritus of society and, in addition to scavenged conventional materials, she works a plethora of unorthodox components including items pulled from dumpsters, household trash, soil samples, long-expired photographic materials, dentistry tools, co-opted advertisements, sampled sounds, acid mine drainage, and pieces of her own body.
Thomas' artistic practice revolves around questions about the human animal's place in the interdependent community of life on Earth, and her place in our society. Her work resides at an intersection between her personal life and the larger world.
