"Poppy Palooza" by Amy Hemphill Dove at Butterfield Garage Gallery

Amy’s experience of the world is full of color and texture. From vivid memories and dreams, she takes delight in creating scores of intensely colored flowers.  Hand-dyed wool and silk fibers are hand-felted and coaxed into radiant blooms in myriad values, shades, sizes, and textures in a palette of warm colors.

This installation of “Poppy Palooza – Dreaming in Technicolor” is a new direction for Amy Hemphill Dove. Her initial idea for this exhibition was sown in November around the time of ‘Remembrance Day’ when she was struck by the significance of wearing poppies in honor of veterans and fallen soldiers  –  poppy flowers were the first vegetation to spring up from the war-torn Flanders battlefield after WW1.

This led to Amy’s more personal memories and their meanings  –  spell-binding fields of poppies in France and California laid indelible imprints and poppies’ symbolism of vivid dreams and imagination likely springs from the medicinal effects of the opium derived from them. A favorite book and movie when she was young was ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’, especially the brilliantly colored scene of the poppy meadow where Dorothy and her friends are entranced by the flowers and fall into a deep sleep.

Join Amy on her colorful journey to the Emerald City…