Amanda Schoppel : Three Holes
"The ‘three holes’ have become my faeries, I see them everywhere, and they have certainly become my friends! It is my experience that people who see these photos are also ’infected by the bug’, which gives me much satisfaction. Evidence that this series successfully changes the way that people who engage with the work, engage with the world around them!"
- Amanda Schoppel, 2008
Artist Biography
Amanda was born in Barrie, Ontario, Canada and currently resides in France. She studied marine biology at Dalhousie University for a year before enrolling at the Nova Scotia College or Art and Design in 1995. In 1997, Schoppel participated in an exchange program at the Chelsea College of Art in London, England. She received a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1998, and an MFA degree at the University of California, Davis in 2006. She has taken part in several exhibitions held throughout Canada, England, and the United States. During the summer of 2001, Amanda represented Canada in the sculpture competition at the IV Jeux de la Francophonie. In 2005 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, USA, and in 2006 participated in the residency program at Taliesin West; The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. The National and Provincial Art Collections of Canada have collected numerous works by Schoppel.
Essay
For me, making art is an act of hope.
Everyday, I try to be a conscious observer of my world, and often approach this task with a great amount of curiosity and wonder. I hope that the things I make will be at once familiar and foreign. That through a process of distillation, the ideas or materials will intrinsically take on a new meaning. A shift in aesthetic value offers a shift in perspective, a slightly askew view that relates to our everyday.
I try to refine ideas or materials to their essence, to bring subtly to the foreground. This distillation often involves an amount of labor. The large amount of time that I frequently spend with the work often leads to a shift in it’s meaning. I labor to make objects that are endowed with the energy of their own making, and I am continually intrigued by the awareness and understanding that can be gained through such activity.