Photo: Alex Ruble

I’m a filmmaker and artist. For 25 years, I’ve kept a lab of inventions for the unsolvable problems of adult life, starting in my sketchbooks.

My work includes Adult Life Lab (a short film, installations, and inventions, made with over 100 collaborators in Finland and Georgia), Dressing Up Our Dreams (a portrait series with Saul Portillo), The Illuminative Method (a method for tracking moments of connection, and my doctoral study), and the documentaries Queen of Threads and Sassy, portraits of creative adults finding their way through life.

I’m currently on an artist residency in Portland, Oregon.

Statement

I make inventions for the unsolvable problems of adult life, and then I build worlds for other people to test them in: films, installations, portraits, methods and books.

I think of my inventions as soft pacemakers for emotions and behaviors. Years ago I pitched an invention to Earl Bakken, who built the first wearable pacemaker. He connected me with a holistic health study in a Minneapolis cardiac unit and introduced me to HeartMath’s research on the heart. Invention has never left me since.

I sketch; collaborators like felt artist Anki Sipilä help bring the inventions to life. Along the way I follow creative adults to learn how they get through life. My doctoral research, the Illuminative Method, still runs underneath it all.

I’m now writing a book that gathers 25 years of the lab.

I work in metaphor. The heart can absorb the ridiculous

Contact: amy@everydayfuturistic.com

EdD, Fielding Graduate University
Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Visualization, MCAD
Juror and moderator, Rome International Film Festival