Amanda Triplett began her career in performance arts, directing her creativity and need for self-expression into dance and theater. She discovered painting at Sarah Lawrence College and fell deeply in love with art making. After a move to the West Coast, she became more ecologically responsible and grew to loathe the idea of creating waste. She began working with environmentally friendly art materials and started incorporating more and more recycled objects into her work. She currently works mostly in found and thrifted fiber, transforming recycled textiles into sculpture and keeping beautiful materials out of the dump.
Statement
I make art in the space where fine art and craftwork intersect, creating sculptural works that play with ideas around body, identity, and motherhood. I take discarded fiber and transform it into biologically-inspired sculptures. Playing with the organic quality of fabric, I manipulate, layer and embroider fiber into new formations, revealing the stories formerly locked within the discarded materials.
In this culture of disposable goods and growing dumps, I see trash as a valuable resource for art-making. I embrace the preciousness of wasted fibers by re-forming them according to the stories embedded in their textures and colors. I feel privileged to be able to take wasted objects, transform them, and make them into something beautiful and new.