Amber Martinez
Featured: April 15th, 2025
A place that inspires my work is almost always the place I live. I gravitate to drawing inspiration from my space because it’s where I spend the majority of my time and where I hold most of my memories. Whether that be from my childhood home, my campus dorm, or my two bedroom apartment that I live in now. These are all places that have directly affected my work. I find that I am my most honest self when I’m at home, so creating work based on that allows me to make work that feels true to myself. These spaces are always very comforting but also I find that they have no strict boundaries. From being messy and disorganized as well as cluttered and small they provide me so much freedom.
My first body of work was heavily inspired by the place I grew up. From the relationships I built there, to the color pallet of my childhood home. I’m originally from El Paso, Texas. Where I started my life in a decent size home that housed my parents and two brothers. Currently it doesn’t have much impact on the work I’m creating at the moment but it supports the ideas I have by promoting concepts of transformation and change. As well as giving a foundation for what I’m thinking about now.
My current body of work is extremely influenced by the space I occupy now. A small two bedroom apartment with my partner and our 5 pets in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Although it's my own place it's filled with things I’ve gotten from other people, furniture from the side of the road, and decor I’ve thrifted. I enjoy having a filled space but with how small my apartment is it becomes cluttered and messy really quickly. I find myself invested in it because it is pieces of a puzzle I’ve had the privilege to collect and gather for myself rather than being born into it. I’m creating all of my new work in my home as well as taking material from it, rather than before I was working out of a university studio space and driving back and forth from Las Cruces to El Paso to collect material. My space now continuously gives me things while I simultaneously give things back to it.
I find the contrast from my childhood home to my apartment now so interesting especially because of their energy and the person I am occupying each, yet I find their paths cross in the way my room gets messy so fast, and how I store my large frying pans in the oven like my mom used to do. My childhood home is a twisting slide to my home now, and it feels that way with my previous body of work to my most recent.
A collection of words from a writing exercise while creating my first body of work while spending time in El Paso, TX.
a collection of words from a recent writing exercise from my home studio in Las Cruces, NM.