Meet Amelia Ray

What is your name and where is your home?

My name is Amelia Ray and I live between Birmingham, AL and Brooklyn, NY, but Alabama is my home! 

Describe your creative process.

My main mediums are documentary film and photography, and I would describe my process as “shooting to know.” I usually start with something or someone that I’m interested in, I spend time capturing it, and then I derive meaning from it.

Describe your piece in the exhibition and its connection to the theme.

My piece is an anthotype made with blueberries that my grandmother grows in her backyard and a Magnolia leaf from the tree of my childhood home. My family recently sold the house I grew up in, and it has been really difficult letting go of that place. I wanted to memorialize it and thought it would be interesting to only use materials from Alabama/my home. Both places— my childhood home and my grandmother’s home— have been “nests” to me in different ways and at different times: they're places that I settled and grew into.

What could you happily look at every day for the rest of your life?

I could look at Alabama’s green, lush landscape everyday!

What is something you're hopeful about?

I've always been and continue to be hopeful about the South–– that we will continue to liberate it from its past and build something that honors everyone who calls it home.