Summer Spotlight: Contemporary Collage
In Summer 2019, students in Amy Reidel's Contemporary Collage class used mixed media and collage materials like watercolor, chalk pastel, magazine cutouts, discarded paper, travel ephemera, fabric, and pencil to create artwork that addressed a theme of their choice.
University College instructor Amy Reidel enjoyed guiding students as they developed their vision:
"Through the principles of design and composition including line, shape, space, value, texture, color, and collage, students explored ideas of intersectional feminism, implementation theory, religion v. science, self-discovery, ideas of the journey and identity, and neuroscience and biology. These topics evolved and revealed themselves as the students set out to manipulate various materials into compositions that they could speak with some conviction about.
It was a truly rewarding and inspiring term working with a group of students who were excited to create artwork based on their own diverse and interesting themes but still informed by the art and design history of elements and principles which can make compositions successful and harmonious."
View the digital exhibition collection, accompanied by student reflection statements.
Amy Reidel is a St. Louis-based artist who has exhibited work nationally since earning her MFA from The University of Tennessee. She has been awarded residencies at ACRE (Artists' Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) based out of Chicago, Vermont Studio Center, the David and Julia White Artists’ colony in Cd. Colón, Costa Rica and at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis. Reidel’s work has been exhibited at the Amarillo Museum of Art, Fluorescent Gallery in Knoxville, ACRE projects gallery in Chicago, and at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.
In 2014 and 2019 Reidel was awarded an Artists’ Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and in 2016 the Critical Mass Creative Stimulus award. She is currently a faculty member at Washington University, St. Louis Community College and Saint Louis University, as well as Co-Founder of All the Art: The Visual Art Quarterly of St. Louis.
View Reidel's upcoming exhibition Sweet Jammy Nightmares at the William and Florence Schmidt Art Center.