Amelia H Carley

Amelia Carley’s art explores the interplay between memories and dreams through imagined landscapes. Influenced by her upbringing in the American Southwest, these pieces are influenced by real geological formations in Western deserts, yet they represent fictional realms. They evoke both unique desert structures and a sense of uncharted terrain.Carley’s most recent works focus on an imaginary place crafted from glass debris collected at southeast Brooklyn’s Glass Bottle Beach on Dead Horse Bay. This beach holds glass fragments dating back over a century, from bottles to sea glass. She meticulously creates and photographs small models, digitally processing them to create a surreal world. She draws from traditional landscape painting, incorporating references to its constructed nature, achieved by alluding to photographic effects like lens flare and blur. These images, with overlapping layers depicting various times and depths, forge passages between different views of the landscape, echoing the uncertain nature of dreams and memories. These works survey this imaginary realm, exploring a human-altered landscape through vibrant and unexpected forms.As we grapple with our emerging anthropogenic reality, Carley questions the authenticity of experiences in nature. Using intense, saturated colors, often associated with harm, to allude to our changing planet. Reflecting on mediated natural experiences, these works explore the overlap of ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ in a fabricated landscape.

Amelia Carley is an artist, curator, and educator. Her work engages with the interpretation of memories within a landscape and fictitious sites. Born and raised in Colorado, Carley received a BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an MFA from the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University. She has participated in several Artist-in-Resident programs, including Vermont Studio Center and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Carley has exhibited at such venues as SOMArts (San Francisco, CA), Southampton Art Center (Southampton, NY), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, UT), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO), Day & Night Projects (Atlanta, GA), Galleries of Contemporary Art at University of Colorado (Colorado Springs, CO), Photographic Arts Center (Denver, CO), Camayhus Gallery (Atlanta, GA), Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY), Main Window Dumbo (Brooklyn, NY), and Paradice Palase (Brooklyn, NY). Amelia Carley currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.