Amy Rogers Connects The Dots

The joyful jewellery of the brand Here and Here first came on my radar at an Inland pop-up event years ago. I was instantly drawn to artist Amy Rogers’ groovy patterns conveyed with a restrained palette of primary colours. Mid-century coded with playful Scandi pops, Here and Here’s pieces are OTT yet just a hare pared back; and you can see the Surrealism influences in the commonly used designs in Rogers’ work – particularly a single eye.

Rogers crafts her one-of-a-kind ceramic jewellery in her downtown Toronto studio along with fine art works ranging from textiles to drawings. Having studied Fibre Art at the Kansas City Art Institute as well as Multimedia at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, her skill set is broad, and her ideas unbound. But there are also important connections that tie her various artistic and design projects together; we talked about them recently as Rogers prepared for an Open Studio event on Saturday, November 23rd from 1-5pm, and having a booth the upcoming return of City of Craft in early December.

Rogers and I spoke about her early inspirations, current projects, and the collection of vibey vessels she’s been working on which will be available at Gallery 1065 from November 29th to December 8th, and in the future at The Gardiner Museum shop.

OPALOMA: Let’s start with how you came to be drawn to making art. I understand your grandparents had an art gallery.

AMY ROGERS: They did. I was exposed to art and museums and art appreciation my whole life. I grew up visiting their gallery and attending the potlucks with the artist the night before their openings. It was very informative for me.

I remember one time, when I was maybe twelvish, going to an art museum, and there was a giant plastic box – red, huge – in one of the rooms. I asked my dad why that was art and he told me, ‘Because the artist said it is.’ And that just opened up everything for me.

Where was your grandparents’ art gallery?

It’s in Omaha, Nebraska. It closed for a short period of time and then my dad re-opened it. Now it's named after my grandparents, and it's a not-for profit-print centre. Anyone can go there and use the presses he has. It’s a really special place, and I try to make a print every time I go there.

Wow, that’s amazing! And a good segue into a question I have about your different practices and what bridges there are between them.

My design work is very different my fine art work. And I have a history of flip-flopping between the two. I'll do fine art for as long as it takes; and it will be very emotionally draining and it’s very personal. Then after I've exhausted myself, I will need to still be doing something with my hands but I need to let my mind rest. So I flip into a design mode.

I work mostly in projects, and I will work on one until it either seems like I've come to a satisfactory place where I feel like I've explored that project enough – or my mind has recharged enough. And then, without even really thinking about it, I’ll vacillate back toward fine art.

The jewellery project came after an exhibition that I did quite a number of years ago. It was so all-consuming and when it was over, out of the blue, I decided I needed to get some clay and make some beads. I don't know why – I had never worked in clay before. I bought a bag of clay from a friend’s shop and started making beads. I think the patterns and the colours and all of the visual overload that's in my jewellery work is an amalgamation of lots of things that I'm inspired by that are percolating and coming out in this way.

“I remember one time, when I was maybe twelvish, going to an art museum and there was a giant plastic box – red, huge – in one of the rooms. I asked my dad why that was art and he told me, ‘Because the artist said it is.’ And that just opened up everything for me.”

What I love about your jewellery is that it has kind of mystical or a talismanic quality to it with some of the designs. I know the Here and Here name is inspired by you living in different cities, but there's also a clear feeling of transportiveness, or travel, imbued in the pieces. Tell me more about the designs themselves.

They’re incredibly playful for me, and they fulfil a role for me in allowing me to have fun and be spontaneous.

The eyes are likely what's pulling them into this talisman kind of idea, but the inspiration with the eye comes more directly from the Surrealism movement. I’m sure a lot of people connect with them because of reasons more in the direction of the Third or Evil Eye concepts. Maybe that's what makes them special, because they're approachable from so many different directions.

To me, the eye is so attractive. It's what we look at the world with. The eye also lends itself well to versions upon versions upon versions of the same thing. I love to play with the eyelashes! So, they somehow walk a line between being something that people have a sort of reverence toward but is also a source of fun as well.

I'm curious about the colour palette that you work with, because it's very restrained. And that restrictiveness presents a real feeling of cohesion in your jewellery collections.

I've always been attracted to primary colours, and I specifically love using the primary colours with one secondary colour. Yet this is also a practical choice because I only want to use underglazes that I'm attracted to. For example, it's hard to get a green underglaze that I like, so I just don't use green. And the pale colours are less attractive to me. Also, the clay I use is naturally a creamy white, and I use yellow sparingly because of how it plays against the white.

There’s also something to be said in that there's more possibilities within a limit. If I was working with 40 colours, for example, I wouldn't even know how to approach it.

I've heard from a lot of designers that limitation can be very expansive.

I think a lot of designers do it sort of intuitively, too, because what you want to put out in the world is something cohesive enough that people understand what it is. I don't think about that, but I think it happens organically.

Tell me about the fabrics you use in your jewellery.

I started using scraps from a friend’s textile business just to make tubes for the beads to sit on. Then it became another way to bring in the colours that I want to that I can’t find underglazes for. And I love to use patterned fabrics so that the pattern of the beads is playing off  the pattern of the fabric.

How else has studying textiles has informed or influenced either your fine art practice or your jewellery designs?

A big part of it is the craft itself, and the idea of being a good craftsperson. It’s about valuing the way something is made and the attention to detail. All of that is part of the textile world and weaving.

And there’s a right and wrong way to do something in textiles that can be expanded on, but it has parameters too. And when you’re doing a dye book, it's an orderly process so that you can come back to it for reference. I love this idea of being so thoughtful.

That makes me think back to what you were saying earlier about vacillating between things you’re working on. What other factors influence how long you work on a project?

The jewellery is the longest time I have stuck with one of my projects, and this is the first time that I felt ready to start making fine art again but not ready to let go of the design project I’m doing. So, I have been practicing keeping many pots stirring at the same time. I resisted that for a long time because it meant that every project is going to go that much slower. But now, it’s more satisfying to me to have two or three projects going at the same time. And it’s interesting because they feel unrelated in my head, but I know that when people see them, they see a connection that I don't even recognize.

Here, Amy shows me a range of vessels she has been working on as an example.

These are actually the first ceramic objects that I've made that are not jewellery. I think of these vessels as a bridge project that happened without me thinking about doing a bridge project. And they straddle the line between fine art and utilitarian object.

Additionally, they're directly related, though not in subject matter, to the drawings that I'm doing right now. They are drawings of floral arrangements that don't have a vessel that they’re in. You just see the illusion of the vessel. They're very, very, very pale and there are many layers to them. They have colour to them, but they’re infinitely quieter than the jewellery. But even those projects have some kind of connection in the repetition of the layers and in the jewellery’s patterns. I think this happens frequently to people who make visual art: They make discoveries about what they're doing when they talk about what happens, because so much of it happens without words.

It’s difficult to write about art for that reason, too.

No kidding, because you're making some kind of link between what little or lot the artist has given in word form about something that you're experiencing without words, and then you're putting your words to that experience.

Exactly. And what I love so much about hearing you talk about your practices and the processes behind them and is that sense of interconnectedness between everything.

I love the idea – and I’ve thought about it quite intensely, and done some work on it – that we all have different roles that we're playing, and all the roles are overlapping and informing one another. In our heads, though, we think about them separately. Like, I don't think about being a daughter and an artist and a caretaker and a neighbour at once because they all seem like such different things. But ultimately, they all inform each other. I like the notion that nothing is disconnected.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.