About Amanda

Amanda Jaffe is a studio artist who draws from the landscape and culture of the two states where she lives, New Mexico and Montana. Her relief porcelain wall tiles are frequently abstract with landscape references and can contain ceramic objects including boats, flowers and leaves. Living close to the US southern border has brought Mexican cultural influence in to her work. Experiences swimming in the ocean and pools makes important contributions to Amanda’s imagery. The death of her parents in 2009 and 2011 led to a continuing series about her mother and father.

 

High relief ceramic tile wall pieces have been Amanda's primary focus but in 2008 she returned to a sculptural format with the body of work, "Turbulent Ocean/Serene Places". The scale of her work ranges from very small to public murals. She has completed three large public art projects in Texas, Washington state and at the Staten Island Zoo for which she received a New York City Art Commission Design award. In 2011 a retrospective exhibition of her art: Looking Back, "Looking Forward" was shown at New Mexico State University.

 

Born in 1953 in Pasadena, California and raised in Boston, Philadelphia and Indiana, Amanda received a BFA in ceramics from Indiana University and a MFA from the University of Montana in Missoula. Amanda Jaffe is a professor emeritus at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where she taught ceramics from 1985 to 2011.Following her graduate studies in 1979 Amanda was an Artist-in-Residence at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana and in 2007 at AIR Vallauris in southern France. She now lives in Helena from July till October and spends the rest of the year in Las Cruces, New Mexico as well as making a yearly trip to the ocean.