In the Making
Amber Lelli + Michelle Armas

Amber Lelli and Michelle Armas are happiest when they’re making things. For Michelle, the making process is about distilling a complex environment into the most basic components of color, shape, and negative space.

Amber Lelli is interested in exploring concepts, asking questions, and choosing the medium and materials best fit for those ideas. Looking through her portfolio you will witness everything from bronze surreal portraiture to innovative marquetry and colorful prints. Here, she utilizes bronze casting and glass blowing. Amber holds a BFA from Middle Tennessee State University in Studio Art and has shown her work throughout the nation, winning various awards and scholarships along the way. Lelli used visual characteristics in the creation of this work such as grouping, voids, color, and material choice as experimental factors. Grouping speaks about interpersonal relationships between individuals. Missing faces become the presence of the void. Rather than being moments of emptiness, they represent an active space; full of conceptual and emotional possibility. The characteristic of color speaks to aesthetic decisions as well as a spiritual nature that furthers the existentialism of the void in some pieces. Materiality is dictated by choosing the medium and material that has the most appropriate language to communicate the intended thoughts or emotions to the audience.

Based in Decatur, Georgia, Michelle Armas creates abstractions, both large-format and delicately scaled, and also works in portraiture. Armas has a graduate degree in graphic design from the Portfolio Center in Atlanta. Of this series, Armas states “Totem paintings are so much fun to create. Each little stack is a universe of individuality. Each piece is utterly unique; a self-contained personality on canvas.” Here, she has created colorful oil, ink, and dye paintings on canvas. Armas has also created custom acrylic frames for each piece in vibrant color.