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AMPed UP

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AMPed UP
June 8, 2022

Welcome, Abigail, our new visitor services/education coordinator! She's a New Hartford native and earned a Bachelor of Arts in fine arts from Central Connecticut State University. She has worked with children in both a professional and volunteer capacity, from teaching Tang Soo Do to serving as a youth and family counselor. Abigail is an avid writer and creator, with a wide focus encompassing painting, fiber arts, and installation work, and is always looking to expand and share her toolkit.

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Ellen’s Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
June 2022

AMP is now less than three weeks away from our June 18 opening. The projects to complete, big and small, have pushed everyone to the limit but no one is complaining. Jamie from Scope has been heading the construction team, along with Tony and Mike from Vision Electric and all the Action Air guys. Their goal is to finish the upstairs education program room in time for our summer kids’ programs. Herbert’s crew from Premier, having just finished the floors in that space, will be spending the first days of June sanding and putting the finish on all the platform flooring.

As for our AMP staff, they have been working overtime to ready the mill for the opening. Abigail, the newest member of our crew, has been preparing for every possible scenario that relates to welcoming people into the space. Along with Ben, we have an all-star duo out in front. Amy, Shari, Sarah, Mimi, Ruthie, and Justin have been everywhere doing everything while Michelle finishes plans for a full summer of kids’ programs at AMP.

For all of us, this is the moment to celebrate and thank everyone who has worked with us on the building and the mural installation, all the volunteers who have given their time to help us, and people all over the country who have donated to our appeals. Without you, there would be no opening.

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Ellen's Work Blog

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Ellen’s Work Blog
May 2022

April has come and gone with appropriate showers, daffodils, and not so appropriate sleet, wind, and cold. Now here comes May, my favorite month, everything in bloom and a very strong chance for wearing shorts on a daily basis.

I have been working this past month on yet another incredible collaborative project we did in 2005, in Japantown San Jose and Manzanar, California. (For historical reference, Manzanar is the site of one of ten American internment camps where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, from March 1942 to November 1945.)

This project took more than a year to organize and would never have happened without help from a few key people in both locations.

In San Jose, Kathy Sakamoto took my phone call, listened to my pitch and, miraculously, stayed on the line. She agreed to work with us and began inviting family, friends, and neighbors in Japantown to come to a fellow artist’s studio for the project. Over two long days, people all over town showed up with memorabilia and created personal messages and artwork on our long rolls of rice paper.

In Manzanar, we planned our arrival to coincide with a weekend pilgrimage to the concentration camp site. People came to the desert from all over northern California—many had lived in one of endless rows of barracks, all using communal bathrooms, no stalls, no doors for two or three years.

My sister, Judy, an award-winning photojournalist, took photos of everyone who participated, and a few are up on our website. She brought her daughter Taylor who skipped school to be on the trip. In exchange, Taylor agreed to write a paper on the internment camps. She interviewed everyone—and I know the experience of listening to people describe their lives in the camps is embedded for life.

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Art at Work: Education

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Art at Work: Education
April 26, 2022

AMP partnered with SOAR, Salisbury Central School (SCS), and twenty2 wallpaper + textile factory of Bantam, Connecticut, to create an all-school mural commemorating the 20th anniversary and legacy of SOAR’s after-school enrichment programs and the program’s founder Zenas Block.

Students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade at SCS worked off of a prompt to create art focused on the work they would like to do when they grow up. Students visually explored their dreams and aspirations for their future work—from teachers, hair dressers, and bus drivers to astronauts, botanists, athletes, and more.

SOAR Executive Director Linda Sloane, AMP teaching artist Jessica Russell, and SCS art teacher Gayle Christinat oversaw the more than three hundred art creations, which were scanned and digitized by twenty2 and turned into high-end wallpaper that covers the length and width of the hallway—80 feet long by 8 feet high—outside the art room at SCS.

Absolutely stunning!

 
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AMP just featured in Freakonomics Podcast!
Listen to episode 605: What Do People Do All Day?

90 Whiting Street • PO Box 538 • Winsted, CT 06098
(860) 379-3006