Amy Schmierbach is an artist, instructor, and activist. Her main goal in art and teaching is to empower others through art making and to help foster individuals to visually communicate their ideas in the studio, in the classroom, and in the community. Since 2000 Amy has taught drawing, foundations, and a multitude of other studio and general education courses at Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS.

Amy received a BFA from Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville and a MFA from Illinois State University in Printmaking. Before and after graduate school Amy interned and then was an artist in residence at the Women’s Studio Workshop in upstate NY. Through these experiences, she learned from master teachers, artists, and activists in which she attributes to all of her successes in and out of the classroom.

Community outreach and service learning are both highly personal objectives for Amy. In today’s society, it is the artist’s responsibility to bring art to the community and to educate the public about art. Living in the rural Midwest this is even more important. This activism is an important objective she brings to her students. Amy believes that we cannot just teach art as a stand-alone skill. Skill is important but ART also has to be valued in our society. Amy and her students regularly work with local community organizations, school districts, senior living centers, and children and adults with intellectual and developmental needs.

Amy’s creative activity reaches into both personal and social practice. Each of these practices inform each other and need each other to thrive. Society’s continual search for inner balance and work/life balance are main themes in her work.  She uses formalized and repetitive processes such as printmaking, drawing, weaving, and embroidery that convey meditative rituals. These are also the techniques she brings into her social practice work with the hope to stimulate more mindfulness and peace in the community.

 In 2018 Amy received the Master Educator Award at Foundation in Art Theory and Education Conference. In 2011 she received the prestigious President’s Distinguished Scholar Award for her dedication to research at FHSU. Amy has exhibited her work across North America and has received many grants to help support her practice.