BIO / Artist Statement

Amanda Gehin is an artist/ citizen scientist working in Kansas City, MO. She spent half her childhood in the bucolic countryside of Wisconsin and the other half in a defunct Victorian sanitarium in disrepair. She is a graduate of Kansas City Art Institute, for which she finished her last credits at the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary. She is a former artist-in-residence of Charlotte Street Foundation, Hoop Dog Studio, and BNIM Architects.

An artist of The Anthropocene, Amanda Gehin looks for and experiments with the underlying geometries in the systems of things. In essence her work is a meditation on underlying architecture in both wild and hypothetical worlds. Her current body of work, the Host Plant Series, is an exploration of specific symbiotic insect and plant relationships native to the ecosystem in which she lives. By patiently observing and experimenting with patterns of co-evolved species, an exciting conversation can reveal itself. A pattern language can reveal itself. This is the hypothesis, at least. In another series entitled Aphysical Mollisonite, she explored the underlying geometries repeated throughout permaculture design- especially those that harness edge harmonics by the use of crenellation and tessellation. Her material choice is usually that of monks from many cultures- gouache on paper, but for Aphysical Mollisonite it was that of an antiquated architect- drawings on drafting film. The visionary and unbuilt architecture of Claude Ledoux or Bodys Isek Kingelez influences her, and her series of paintings entitled Infinite Interior explored the expansiveness of folded space as rendered as an optically-illusory home.

Amanda has applied principles of permaculture to her life and thus operates between disciplines. She thrives on the edges, operating between conservation practice and art or permaculture practice and art, all the while thinking of architecture. Where zones interface, high diversity occurs as a result of edge harmonics. This is where she makes her work. This is also the subject of her work. The beautiful and semi-ambiguous scientific-interpretive interests her, like the work of Paul Laffoley or Anita Chowdry. She looks to others that operate in similar spaces. Amanda recently obtained Permaculture Design Certification in Longo Mai, Costa Rica and an upcoming project will be to illustrate a book on biomimicry.