Biography
Looking for Viola nephrophylla with botanist Dr. Ross McCauley
Amy K. Wendland received a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and worked commercially as an artist and designer, with projects ranging from book covers and logo design to advertisements and museum exhibit drawings. After a decade of freelancing, Ms. Wendland returned to school, earning an MA and MFA in Graphics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Amy now lives and works in Durango, Colorado where she is a Professor of Art at Fort Lewis College. Ms. Wendland has served as Department Chair and Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences, and is a recipient of the Alice Admire Outstanding Teaching Award.
Ms. Wendland’s research is focused on the study of plants and people. Amy works with deaccessioned herbarium samples, transforming them into contemporary herbaria viva—dried plants augmented with drawing and painting. These artworks speak in dialog with science to illustrate stories of culture, history and the environment. Amy has been an artist-in-residence at Denver Botanic Gardens and Haystack Mountain School of Craft. Her artwork is shown nationally and internationally. Reviewers have described Ms. Wendland’s artworks as “darkly ironic and beautifully crafted,” “witty and complex... sparked by fierce imagination” and “immaculate and beautifully crafted, marked by characteristic intellectual playfulness.”
