August 2016 Unicorn Of The Month: Amy Fleming

I spend a lot of time in the woods near my home in north Florida, digging through old dump sites and collecting bones after deer hunting season ends. There is often a theme to the discards I find out there: a toaster next a coffee percolator and a shot up refrigerator, or a busted up typewriter with a ruined time clock, maybe a side view mirror and a piece of a car horn. There are plenty of interesting discards around the city as well: broken bird baths, vintage floor waxers, and damaged toys left on the curb to be either rescued by my pick up truck or carried off by city services, whoever gets there first.

I pull these things out of the ground and off of the curb, and imagine the stories behind them. Sometimes my own stories find their way in. I continually revisit themes from past work to further expand them as I delve deeper into the meanings of discarded and recovered objects and materials. 

Favorite items occur and reoccur, such as a shot up refrigerator, banged up vehicles, smashed household appliances. Imagery cycles through depicting objects, to taking rubbings from the objects, to using the objects themselves, and back to depiction. If it’s banged up, damaged, rusted, or been through a few fires, I’m interested in it.

More of Amy's work can be seen on her Website.