Two Sides of Consumerism

>>Call Amy Fleming's art "garbage" and she's likely to agree. "It's a landscape, but it's full of junk," the account manager for the Fort Myers public relations firm Paula Robertson & Associates says cheerfully.

She means that literally-her latest series of landscapes feature what she calls "discards"-basically, junk. "I'm very interested in consumerism and marketing and how that affects how we think, what we buy, what we value," Fleming explains. "My thing is sort of, 'You are what you throw away.'"

The salvage yard landscapes were featured at a Tallahassee gallery this past December, a showing that included her largest piece, an eight-by-16-foot landscape she worked on in her living room because "that was the only place that had a wall that big."

Fleming learned the scratchboard technique she's currently using, in which black ink is scratched out to reveal a pattern in white clay below, while pursuing her fine arts degree in Virginia. She's come back to that technique recently with her current "discards" series.

This isn't Fleming's first brush with artistic success. Her work was invited into the prestigious Drawing Center in New York, an exhibition space and slide-image bank that archives selected art for posterity and reference purposes. She has had work featured at art centers all over the country.

Fleming, whose husband is photographer Jim Fleming, doesn't choose to pursue her calling full-time, content to devote around 10 or so hours every week to her avocation. Artistically, she feels, "having a regular, full-time job frees you to do the things you want to do."

That's not to say the artist is resting on her easel. "Art itself is work; it's just as exhausting as doing a daily job," says Fleming. "But it's like breathing-you have to."