Whether it be re-constructing internal or external elements of art, Eastern Michigan University professor Amy Sacksteder has been into "creative expression" since a very young age.
Through her life, she has had her art in many galleries and now shares her passion by teaching art to students at EMU.
"I love how Amy is so encouraging and inspiring in every class I've had with her," EMU art student Nia Crutcher said. "She's pushed me to do some of my best work, and she isn't afraid to show her students off."
During undergrad at University of Dayton in Ohio, Sacksteder got her degree in English with an art minor, later deciding to get her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting at Northern Illinois University in 2004. For the most part, she has been two-dimensional focused, but got into ceramics more recently.
"All of my work kind of stems from painting," Sacksteder said. "But over the years, I don't really see hierarchies in media or approaches. Generally I let the content drive the work, and I don't see hierarchies in terms of concepts either."
Sacksteder said that she does believe all art should have meaning, but doesn't have specific themes in her pieces, and rather allows the art itself to create the idea.
"The work typically resides at the intersection of human interaction with the landscape, and abstraction," she said.
In the time since 2006 when Sacksteder began teaching at EMU, the world has gone through a lot of "hard and important changes," and she is grateful that EMU has been an accepting space for everyone, she said.
"I love mostly the people at EMU, I love our student makeup. I love the diversity of our students," Sacksteder said. "I feel like the professors really nurture the students and each other."
Additionally, rather than being a Research 1 school that prioritizes research over teaching, EMU is Research 2, meaning that the university prioritizes the two almost equally. Sacksteder feels that this allows the professors at Eastern to be closer to the students, while simutaneously being informed about the topic they are teaching.
Art students at EMU love the art program and professors as well, and had many great things to say about Sacksteder's teaching style and their time in her classes.
"Her teaching is very one on one," Sharelle Krisel, an art student in Sacksteder's 300-level drawing class, said. "She definitely always gives like advice. She'll say, like, 'oh, I like your work, but here's something that would make it better.' I really appreciate the feedback that she gives."
Kennede Thomas, an art education student at EMU, said that Sacksteder is a great example for her to model her own teaching after in the future.
"Professor Sacksteder, or as she liked to be called, simply Amy, is a multi-talented artist/professor here at EMU," Thomas said. "Her teaching style is laidback, firm and encouraging. It is evident that what she teaches us is reflective in her own body of work. I enjoy Amy's love of words and professionalism as well as her goofy energy in the classroom."
Sacksteder expressed immense gratitude and love towards the "generous spirit" of students at EMU, and said she feels a lot of "acceptance of everyone's dimensions as humans" at the university, which is not always the case.
When it comes to her own personal work, a piece called "Watershed" is one of Sacksteder's favorite, encompassing many aspects of her artistry.
The piece, which Sacksteder called a "full circle experience," is an oil painting that came to be from a collage, following a 2010 trip to Iceland where she took photos of sea glass.
The collage only more recently morphed into the painting last year.
"It's been through all these parts of my life, I started making the collages after my first son was born to have it like responsive way to make work that was easy to pick up and put down because it wasn't too messy," she said.
After having two kids and dealing with health issues, Sacksteder got into safe oil painting practices, which she now teaches to her classes.
"For years, I used solvents and dryers, and my paint and varnishes, and resins, and they're really bad for your health. So I got rid of all of those in my painting practice in 2019," she said.
"Watershed" is one of the most detailed paintings that Sacksteder did with the new method of oil painting, a technique she had to devise after 20 years of being trained in a different way.
Spending a year on Zoom in 2020 urged Sacksteder to do the opposite of being hands-off, and fully immerse herself in art with ceramics. So, she signed up for classes at the Yourist Studio in Ann Arbor and has since taken around 16 short six-week programs, she said.
"I love that my way of thinking about design, and objects and surface all come together in this medium," Sacksteder said. "I love also that since I've been making work my whole life about the landscape and human interaction with the landscape working with actual clay from the Earth seems really fitting."
Somewhat, ceramics are in Sacksteder's DNA, she said, as her mom's side of the families from the Appalachian Mountains.
"There's a vein of gray clay that runs through the Georgia red clay, which is actually very sandy, but the actual clay you can dig up and apparently my mom and her brothers would dig it up and make like little pots and let them dry in the sun when they were growing up. And I only learned that information after I instinctively started working with clay," Sacksteder said. "I think it's in everyone's DNA in a way because it infuses cultures, right? Same with any of the other like fibers papermaking, anything that's considered a craft discipline is I think, needs to be respected for its own heritage."
Anytime that she gets down on herself about being an artist, Sacksteder pictures the world without art and realizes the world would be unlively without it.
"What would even be the point?" she said. "I think that we as artists add color and life to the world alongside the natural world... it calls attention to important fundamental aspects of life. It is a mirror for us as humans."
Sacksteder said she doesn't know where she would be without her passion for art. After getting bit by the "painting bug" while studying abroad in France during college, she decided it would be her forever thing, and is now her way to connect with people.
Moving forward, Sacksteder hopes to travel more for her art career.
Previously, she said that she has had residencies all over the world in places including "Northern Illinois, Newfoundland, Southern France, Reno, Nevada, Budapest twice, Iceland three times, inner city Philadelphia, and rural Tennessee."
"I hope to do more like specialized residencies. And I really hope to marry ceramics and my 2D work. I'll continue to do that, explore that," she said.
Sacksteder loves the art scene in the city of Detroit as well, she said, and would love to be able to somehow live in Ypsilanti and Detroit at the same time. Detroit is where the most art comes out of in this region, and she said she loves the fact that the city is a place where there are a diverse range of artists who are delving into their own culture and heritage, always supportive of each other.
Currently, Sacksteder is working on a big project that consists of a series of paintings with embedded ceramic tiles, which she wrote a faculty research fellowship on to be able to work on it more next school year.
Ultimately, she hopes her students and herself can be seen as fully-dimensional people.
"I have Crohn's disease and other related autoimmune issues, I have a child with with autoimmune issues... I want to be seen that way as a professor, and as a mom, and as an artist, and as a person who has a chronic illness," Sacksteder said. "I feel like there's visibility for all of that in my life. And I'm grateful for that and we still need to fight for more visibility for that, and for so much more."
People can view Amy Sacksteder's art on amysacksteder.com or on Instagram @amysacksteder_studio and @object_affinity.
