Sue Amendolara

Okay, since I've shown you my first jewelry fabrication piece, I thought I'd introduce you to my jewelry professor: Sue Amendolara (aw-men-doe-lar-a). There are two jewelry professors at Edinboro: Cappy (my advisor) is one and Sue is the other.

Okay, so honesty, Sue's aesthetic is a lot closer to my own than Cappy's, although I respect them both as artists very much.

The piece shown is entitled "Flower of Life" and is one of Sue's later pieces... her earlier work is much different from a materials standpoint (she used a lot of other materials besides metal: plexi-glass and ebony... and she used a lot more surface treatments, like texturing and Mokume Gane (marriage of metals)). Although what her earlier work has in common with her later work is an affinity for organic shapes and clean lines (but in my opinion, her later works are more successful solutions to these problems).

Anyways, she's a really nice lady and awesome teacher... during our critique on Thurs, she had a lot to say to students who thought their pieces hadn't turned out very well... telling them that it's never useful to put ourselves down because we're always changing and always learning. She said that metal is one of those mediums that takes time to get used to, gets familiar, but is always going to be challenging. She simply had a lot of positive things to say to everyone: I really appreciated her attitude, although I'm not sure if I'm getting it across here.

To me, she seems like one of those people who takes art as a philosophy as well as a life style and life choice... but that's not to say that she takes herself too seriously. She just seems very level-headed and knowledgeable. I hope that I can be as helpful to budding artists some day if I ever get to where I'm going.

To learn more about Sue and her artwork, visit www.sueamendolara.com