Amy Alley : Re-Crafting
The recrafting work of Amy Alley is the story of a love regained. Born on April 3rd, 1961 in Danville, IN, a
mall suburb of Indianapolis, to which her parents had moved from a small corn-farming town called Lafayette, IN, where
her grandfather sold tractor tires.
Beginning in kindergarten, Amy excelled at art in school and had an aptitude for cutting and organizing geometric
shapes
and colors, and spent a good deal of time in batiking. By high school her art was regularly displayed at the Danville
Greensboro Coliseum. She was offered an art scholarship at Delmar College, but, possibly due to her struggles with
dyslexia, was daunted by the academic challenges and opted to attend Vogue Beauty College and became a licensed
manicurist.
Amy paints one of her and David's Child's Puzzle Rockers
This was an easy path for Amy because she had grown up in the beauty shop world. Her mother had been a hair
dresser and manicurist and her parents owned and ran a beauty shop called La Marché's until 1970 when they moved to
Corpus Christi, where they helped open the city's first nail salon, at which Amy found lucrative employment right out
of
college.
She fell in love with a Mexican surfer and helped him open a surf-board shop, and they gave birth to a son, Elliot in
1983 and Amy's artistic creativity fell into the shadows to be forgotten for nearly twenty years, which included a
divorce, remarriage to her life-partner David, relocation to Pensacola, FL and the opening of her own nail salon,
Amy's
Alley in 2004.
Alley Craft Child's Puzzle Rocker in progress
One day in Pensacola Florida David challenged Amy to pick up the paint brush again and “it just kinda opened
pandora's box again”. She began one day just using house paint to create a mural on their refrigerator, and soon began
assembling an acrylic palate. Her role as grandmother to Elliot's two daughters shaped her work, as many of her
designs have been inspired by their needs and fondness'.
Click any item below for a gallery view of the project
