Amy Santoferraro is currently part of the Resident Artist Program here at The Clay Studio. Santoferraro, who received her BFA from Ohio State University, is a mixed media artist trained in ceramics. Her work is rooted in nostalgia, evoking memories of ones past through the use of recognizable found objects rooted in contemporary pop culture. Just Visit exemplifies this, employing ceramic figurines that Santoferraro has collected over many years. Santoferraro reflects on childhood memories of playing with her vast menagerie of toy animals. Through the use of video, Santoferraro animates her collection and brings them to life, creating a fantastical world. Many of the main characters of the video were then photographed, with the digital prints produced being a large part of the show.
"In writing about Just Visit, Santoferraro states, "Driving back to Tennessee from Philadelphia, I received a delayed phone message from Clark, an old friend who was also traveling. He’d been looking for a place to sleep in Tennessee the night before, only I had just received his call. I blamed the mountains. I called back to see how he’d made out and to catch up since it had been about a year since we had last spoke. He asked where I was just as I passed a sign for Roanoke. I was 20 miles north of Roanoke and told him so. He was 20 miles south. We met at a Mexican restaurant off of I-81, and gladly shared the chips and salsa that were given to us but deemed whiskey the only safe bet on the menu. We shared a hotel room and our hopes and thoughts for the future. A just visit overall. "
"The objects and processes featured in Just Visit have come together with the same degree of alchemy present in that chance Roanoke roadside reunion. I am a maker, collector, and rest stop of objects. In past search and rescue missions I have sought out and found many objects and materials, and somehow instantaneously I knew them and placed them in their new imagined lives. "
"These guys were different. Unsure of their exact purpose for my purposes I kept on collecting, amassing, hoping, and trusting that it would sort itself out by revealing some common thread, a shining hope, a special purpose. Animation and photography have proved to be the new, loving, adoptive home where these objects have finally come together for an easy nuzzle, a matching color, a completed tale. "
"Keeping true to catch and release practices, it’s time to let go. Some of these objects have been with me forever, some just a couple of weeks, but all of them have boasted some degree of promise or beauty to me. I ask that you blindly take them on, not knowing, but trusting that they will do something for you too."
"They were just visiting."
