Amanda Sheley

Amanda is a tapestry weaver based in Orange County, where she works at the Laguna Art Museum and San Diego Archaeological Center. She has been weaving since 2013, when a good friend from her hometown in Colorado taught her how to process her pet alpacas’ fiber. In the years since, she has studied under master weavers Elizabeth Buckley and David Johnson, who offered the opportunity to push past the boundaries and expectations of traditional tapestry methods. Her Bachelor of Arts is in Anthropology, where she studied the significance of weaving in cultures around the world, and a Master’s degree in Museum Management. Much of her work combines the techniques of tabby weave and Soumak knots to create topographical lines, and express the border between sections of earth.

Amanda’s work explores the natural landscape and the effect of human presence on our landforms. Many of the maps she works with are from before humans permanently altered it with dams, crowds of tourists, and imposing infrastructure. As Edward Abbey famously said in Desert Solitaire, “A civilization that destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.” Let’s never forget the wilderness and embrace what remains in our cherished Southern California region.