Amber Rane Sibley is a New York based ceramic sculptor. Sibley’s work explores the unexamined imprisonments that result from narrative identity. The figures that populate her work are surrogates for the collective. They are vessels of self-delusion and self-mythology, crippled creatures debilitated by their own will. They are superior limb-less and nonprehensile with often voluntarily obstructed vision. And yet they make no effort to change their lot. As Sibley excavates the darkened caves of the professed chosen, spiritually special, or the habitually inert she discovers the frightened inner child seeking bedtimes stories to quell the tortures of waking-life. She offers them portraits to embody the fear, the unknowns, and the examination of their actualities. And so the figures become deceptively hopeful, candied representations of the not-knowing, of the un-chosen, and of the ignorant. Do we greet them then as helpless companions in need of aid or the dark mirrors we’ve avoided?
Sibley prizes ceramic for the way it parallels the uniquely human themes that are central to her work; its invitation to imperfection, the primariness of the human hand that crafts it, and the revealed mysteries of its processes—just as one’s narrative identity requires time to show its effects and can never truly be predicted, so too goes the outcome of a glazed and fired form.
Amber Rane came of age in the rural mountains of southern Vermont and on the sandy beaches of the Nantucket Sound; an original dichotomy that lives on in her and in her work. She began with a career in theater and television, building props and puppets for shows like Blue Man Group and NBC’s Sunny Side Up Show for over 10 years. She honed her approach to abstract narrative through Burlesque performance, crafting a series of award-winning comedically absurd routines. She received her BFA from Hunter College and is a ceramic MFA candidate at Tulane University. Selected exhibitions include: Solo exhibition at Fierman Gallery (NYC); Group exhibitions at First Street Gallery (NYC); Gallery Petite (NYC); Leubsdorf Gallery (NYC). She currently lives and works in New York.
Visit Amber Rane Sibley’s website and Instagram page.
Featured work
Selected works, 2020-2022
