Artist Biography:
Amelia McDonnell is a Interdisciplinary Artist based in Columbus, Ohio, originally from Cleveland, working primarily in ceramics, print media, and photography. Her practice is rooted in material transformation through form, texture, and surface. She explores themes of erosion, memory, memory loss, and ancestral connection.
McDonnell holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fine Arts 2D and 3D from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her sculptural work often bridges the organic and the architectural, blending ceramic construction with print-based surfaces and experimental firing methods. She is particularly interested in the tactile and elemental nature of clay, treating it as both a recording device and a vessel for emotional and historical resonance.
Her work has been recognized with several awards, including the Boston Printmakers Award in the 2024 Boston Printmakers Student Exhibition and the George Nick Prize. She continues to develop a multidisciplinary studio practice focused on process, decay, and the persistence of memory through material.
Artist Statement:
The landscape of my home on the Lake Erie coastline, especially its ever-changing shoreline, influences how I think about loss, resilience, and transformation. The cycles of erosion and renewal along the water's edge reflect personal and generational experiences of grief, displacement, and memory. I often return to the image of erosion as a metaphor: a gradual, sometimes invisible process that removes what once seemed permanent. Yet, erosion does more than take away; it reshapes, reveals, and opens space for regrowth.
In my work, I explore this emotional rhythm through the materials I use: clay, copper, wood, steel, glass, and paper. These elements carry their own histories, shaped by time, weather, and touch. They crack, oxidize, melt, and rust, echoing the way memories transform over time. The physicality of these materials connects my body to the work, grounding abstract experiences in something tangible and sensory.
Photography and text are integral to my practice, serving as both visual and conceptual layers within the work. I embed text and image directly into surfaces, allowing them to interact with the physical materials and echo the emotional terrain they represent. These visual fragments allow me to articulate the layered nature of history, inheritance, and identity. In recontextualizing these images, I create new meanings and connections, acknowledging both what remains and what has been lost.
Ultimately, my work explores the fragmented and evolving nature of experience. Each piece honors the past, while also imagining how it might be rebuilt. My practice is a way of transmitting an illusion of a place and alchemizing grief.
In this space of contradiction and possibility, I explore what it means to find home—not as a fixed place, but as something continually shifting. My work offers a site for grief, remembrance, and renewal. The result is a body of work that embraces vulnerability, celebrates transformation, and invites viewers to reflect on their own relationship with memory, material, and place.