What began as childhood restlessness became adolescent anxiety and, in adulthood, chronic sleeplessness. For Ames, the effects have lasting consequences that continue to unfold and reshape perception itself. In the absence of rest, emotions sharpen, memory fractures, and time splinters into fragments. Chasing Sleep gives form to those states of suspension.
The paintings are dense fields of color and light, where fragments of memory, perception, and sensation collide. Each work inhabits the tension between exhaustion and clarity, fragmentation and coherence. Through pigment, her sculptural motifs—often rooted in the contours of the female form—expand into new psychological and emotional registers; they are meant to evoke uncertainty and create memories that transcend the original form of the natural wood of the sculpture.
Alongside the canvases, Ames presents bronze sculptures that capture the body’s fragility and persistence. First modeled in clay, these forms bear the trace of touch: the pressure of hands, the imprint of gesture, and the collapse of surface.
Cast into bronze, what was once malleable becomes enduring, though still marked by its origin in softness. The sculptures echo the fragmented ways in which memory and identity are shaped—through persistence, rupture, and repair—while their solid forms stand as testaments to resilience, survival, and strength.
Ames’ practice has been recognized nationally and internationally, with exhibitions at the American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; de Young Museum, San Francisco; New York University Kimmel Galleries; Site:Brooklyn, New York; and abroad at Sogo Arts Gallery, Glasgow. She is also the creator of a public work for the Los Angeles Metro, More People Than You Know, and the author of Fighting the Good Fight: A Breast Cancer Journey.
With Chasing Sleep, Ames offers a resolution—one that reflects the ways perception, the body, and memory are reshaped in the absence of rest, and how even in fragments, beauty and strength endure.
