Oh dear, this post is severely overdue. Life has been a bit insane lately and, unfortunately, paid work got in the way of this passion project. This is one that I wish I would have written up immediately afterward, as the conversation we had was so wonderful and I’m sure I won’t quite do it justice now. But, I shall do my best and we shall continue nonetheless!
Amber Aguirre
I found Amber and her work when simply Googling artists on the Big Island and I am so glad I did! I drove over to her studio on the other side of the Island at the beginning of April for a session and a chance to talk story.
Amber is a ceramic artist and sculptor based in Kona, Hawaii. She has been a full-time, working artist since she moved to Hawaii 16 years ago and is represented by some of the top galleries in the field of ceramics. Needless to say, it was a huge treat to learn more about her and her work! It was also so wonderful and soul-filling to talk conceptual art for a bit!
Amber’s studio is a really neat space on what used to be the patio of their house. It is open-air, though fully covered, an important thing here in Hawaii. While ceramics are the main focus for her, Amber also dabbles in all sorts of other mediums and art forms, from stained glass to jewelry and beyond. She has her studio space separated and organized for each medium, almost creating separate little rooms for them. There is also a pond that runs almost the entire length of the studio, stocked with some large koi! What a cool feature to have right in your studio!
Most of Amber’s ceramic pieces are either anthropomorphic or fully human, so accurate anatomy and body proportions are important. To help her with this, she has skeletons and anatomy models scattered around her studio. These give her a reference point as she creates her figures and keeps them more accurate and lifelike. It also makes for a classic artist studio vibe.
Amber was working on one of her newest pieces, titled “Crash, “ while I was there that day. You can actually see the finished version on her Instagram, for those who are curious! This piece features one of her most common subjects, anthropomorphic bunnies. Horses, bees, and babies have also been recurrent subjects over the years, all used to reference and draw attention to different things. She has landed on bunnies as one of her main subjects because she is drawn to making something that is supposed to be weak and defenseless into something that is stronger and more powerful.
This juxtaposition of the cute, playful bunnies with the very serious concepts that she works with is extremely intriguing to me. Some of her pieces seem extremely light, playful, and almost funny at first glance, and then when you see the details you realize it isn’t quite what it seems. I won’t get the quote quite right after all this time, but her daughter says that Amber likes to start things off with humor and then hit viewers with something serious and dark. It adds layers to the work that wouldn’t be there otherwise and makes me want to dig deeper into the concept of each piece.
Amber’s pieces are created by using all sorts of different ceramic processes. She uses whatever technique is necessary to achieve the look she is going for, from wheel throwing to slab and hand-building. She even developed her own technique, called Naked Fauxku. I am by no means an expert when it comes to ceramics (my one undergraduate ceramics class didn’t result in that, unfortunately), but it is very impressive to me how well-rounded and technically skilled Amber is. Her attention to detail is equally impressive. Some of her pieces are incredibly lifelike, even when the subjects aren’t found in real life.
While I was there Amber was working primarily on the head of one bunny. It was exciting to see the detail come out as she slowly carved and pressed and manipulated the clay. It’s been a while since I’ve worked on one particular piece that requires extensive time but watching Amber spend time on something that had clearly already taken a while made me miss that. You form a unique connection to a piece of work when you work on it over the course of weeks or months. Perhaps a “labor of love” is too cliche, but it really can become that. You invest a piece of yourself into those projects and they just feel different when done as a result.
Amber is a woman with lots of stories and some wild experiences. Though we didn’t have time to talk extensively about her life and past, I could grasp from what we did talk about, as well as the work that she produces, that she has had to fight through some serious challenges over the course of her life. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, she had a rather unique childhood that fueled her to use her work as a means of speaking out against social injustice. She also suffered a severe injury while in the backcountry and dealt with chronic pain for years as a result, before opting to amputate part of her leg just over a year or so ago.
One of the things that stood out to me in our conversation is how we both see the creative process as our outlet and our means of processing the things we are going through. It may not come out in an obvious, straightforward way, but the studio and process of making something is more or less therapy for both of us (and many artists). Without the time and means to create, we can get a bit unsettled. The things that she has experienced and had to battle with absolutely come through her work in a variety of ways, whether it be obvious, such as some of her political pieces, or more subtle, like some of her more personal pieces.
This brings me to the final part of this artist series. After she mostly wrapped up what she needed to work on and I was able to get plenty of shots of her working, we headed down to where she stores her finished work.
The space Amber stores her finished work is essentially a mini gallery. Getting to see so many different pieces made by her in one place was absolutely amazing. It was also special to get little bits of insight into many different sculptures. She didn’t explain them all, in part because there are so many, but also because she likes to leave some open to interpretation. One of the things we talked about was how it is important to us to let others come to their own conclusions about our work. Finding the line of when to guide viewers where we want them to land versus leaving it too open is a struggle at times. She also mentioned that she holds more information back and says less about the meaning of a piece when it is highly personal. This is something that I find myself doing frequently, especially with more recent work and with my self-portrait series, so it was nice hearing another artist express that they do the same thing.
On the other hand, some of her work pretty much speaks for itself and doesn’t need any additional information. As I mentioned above, because of what her parents went through, Amber feels the responsibility to speak out about social injustice, which frequently involves creating very political work. Politics both here in the United States, as well as more global issues, are recurring subjects. These sculptures, generally speaking, are more straightforward and easily understood. They are still loaded with iconography but are more in-your-face with their intention.
Getting to know the artist behind such powerful work is an amazing experience and one I am extremely grateful for. Thank you to Amber for having me in her studio and spending time talking story!
You can see more of her work on her website: https://amberaguirre.com/