Betty Amendola

           
   
 

Betty Amendola

It seems that Betty has been creating things her whole life, from drawing paper dolls and making shoe box doll houses for her younger sisters, to a tissue paper Christmas tree and eggshell ornaments for her first apartment. When she didn’t have her head in a book, she was drawing or building something.

Betty was born in the south, reared in the Midwest, spent her young adulthood in Hawaii and has been a Tucson resident for over 30 years. Living in all of these areas and experiencing different cultures has influenced the way she looks at the world and her art.She attended Western Illinois University and majored in art education. Teaching did not interest her but commercial art did. Brow beating a future employer in Hawaii, she finally got her first job in advertising. After working for nine years for advertising agencies, Betty was approached by Pan American Airways and encouraged to open her own Graphic Design Studio, which she did in 1977. With Pan Am as her first client she was off and running and the rest is, as they say, history.

Betty has only been pursuing her passion for clay for the last few years. However, her art background has been a great asset and has given her the tools to try new things. Betty creates handbuilt pottery, from a variety of clay bodies. She constantly experiments with applying slips, glazes, oxides and stains to textural effects. A raku addict, Betty has her own raku kiln and does raku firing in her back yard. Clay is her medium. It is forgiving, plastic, malleable and it moves her like nothing else. Her friends tell her that she will do anything with clay except eat it. (She hasn’t figured out how to make that work yet). Inspired by ordinary things, she is not sure where her ideas come from... they seem to just happen. Sometimes she just lets the clay take her where it will.

   

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