Amy Sell
Mint Mosaics
Exhibit Location: McDade Gallery
Meet the Artist: Thursday, August 6 | 6:00-7:00 pm
Notes: Amy’s artwork is for sale. Please stop by the reference desk for more information.
From the Artist
I work for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and enjoy working on coin designs at the end of each day. I make these designs with pieces of hand-cut pennies, dimes, and quarters that are arranged to form pictures and secured to canvas or wood rounds with E6000 jewelry glue. The shears used are 12” aviation shears you can buy at Harbor Freight, Tractor Supply, or anywhere tools are sold for $12.00-$25.00.
Where I came up with the idea: Over 20 years ago, I made a shadowbox that I kept on a coffee table in the different places I lived in as a young adult. It displayed things you might find on the seashore. Mostly shells and rocks, but also other ephemera of the sea and beach days. – a bobber, hook, coins, and a couple fossils. One part of the display was a sand dollar broken in three pieces next to a penny that was also in three pieces. I didn’t know how I came into possession of the broken penny, but somehow, I did.
At some point I lost track of the box and contents, but I didn’t forget that penny. It crossed my mind to recreate it, and after some trial and error, I did manage to split one in two with tin snips as I held it steady enough with one hand that it didn’t slip. I did this with a few more coins until I had several pieces on the white tile, and then it crossed my mind that I could arrange them to make them look like something else, like a horse or sailboat.
The why is a little more abstract: Besides being a challenging outlet for creativity and aggression with plenty of raw material readily available, my inspiration is all the people who, like me, feel or have felt worthless and invisible as a coin on the ground. And like a broken coin, there are people who get treated as though their existence is inherently wrong, though they are perhaps not breaking any real law. I like to think of this art as metaphorically displaying the complex and remarkable pictures that even the most broken of us can be part of. Having worked in retail, food service, warehouses, and various clerical roles, I’ve seen the value that people of seemingly little economic value have to offer, and I like to think that these designs visually represent the possibilities of a multitude of imperfect pieces over the limited possibilities of a few perfect ones.
For more information:
FB: @mintmosaics
