Florescence from Turley Gallery

Amelia Toelke is a visual artist whose work is rooted in the history of adornment, decoration, and material culture. Toelke holds a BFA in Metal and Jewelry from SUNY New Paltz and MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An interest in public art, collaboration, contemporary craft, and cultural exchange guides her multidisciplinary practice, taking hold early on when she and a group of friends turned an old firehouse in Kingston, NY into a shared studio and gallery. Toelke exhibits nationally and internationally and continues to explore collaborative avenues in curation and public art, highlighted in last year’s public installation Underpin & Overcoat, the recent exhibition Worn. She is the recipient of merits such as the Windgate Fellowship Award, the Blair H. and Leah D. Temkin Award, and the Best in Show prize for Sculpt EVV, and was recently awarded the Ora B. Schneider fellowship at the Women’s Studio Workshop. She has been an artist in residence at Lanzhou City University, China, Brush Creek Center for the Arts, and a participant in Artisterium in Tblisi, Georgia. Her work has been presented in publications such as Metalsmith magazine, Art Jewelry Forum, and The Washington Post and has been published in the books 500 Enameled Objects, Unique by Design. Toelke has taught at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Peters Valley, and SUNY New Paltz. Toelke is currently based in Chatham, NY.