“It’s kind of simple: I want to be alive and I want to breathe.” —— Amy Franceschini.
Amy Franceschini is a contemporary American artist and designer born in Patterson, California in 1970. Patterson is a small town in California known as “the breadbasket of America”. Her work encompasses many aspects, including drawing, sculpture, design, net art, public art, and gardening. Amy doesn’t seem to have had the usual artistic training. She received her BFA from San Francisco State University in photography and her MFA from Stanford University. Amy actually wanted to study photojournalism, but she got kicked out. Then she went to the art department. Basically, Amy studied photography in the art department, but she mainly did sculpture and ceramics. In an interview Amy shared that it wasn’t until maybe five years ago that she realized how much ceramics has influenced her work. She must collaborate and respect others. Everyone has their own duties. This spirit of collaboration really influenced her.
Amy creates work that facilitates encounter, exchange, and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the “certainties” of a given time or place where a work is situated. The main theme in her work is a perceived conflict between “humans” and “nature”. She finds that in the work they do as artists, food and farming are a way of bringing people together. Common themes in Amy’s work are gardening, public space, technology, and social change. She works both as an artist as well as a designer. Amy often provides many playful entry points and tools for audiences to gain insight into deeper fields of inquiry. Not only to imagine but to participate in and initiate change in the places we live.
In her Gardening Silicon Valley Superfund Sites project in 2007, she cataloged and planted twenty-six fallow sites of former high-tech companies with native flowers. Six months later she hosted a bus tour through these landscapes. In 2008, she created a proposal to the City of San Francisco to adopt an urban agriculture program based on the historic Victory Garden programs. This work was exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2007 and in 2008, and a pilot program was adopted by the city of San Francisco which fostered collaboration with a network of urban gardeners resulting in a garden planted in front of the city hall.
Amy Franceschini founded Futurefarmers in 1995 as a design studio and a residency program. She brings together and collaborates with artists, activists, researchers, farmers, architects, and other multidisciplinary artists. They work together to propose alternatives to the social, political, and environmental organization of space. Their design studio serves as a platform to support art projects, an artist in residence program, and their research interests. Futurefarmers is a collective of five core members but, through their residency program, they have a network of 33 artists and designers. They rise up for projects based on the individual interests of members, as well as depending on time and availability.
Amy’s story and work captivated people. Her work often takes a visual approach to articulate perceived conflicts between humans and nature, and the individual to a community. The themes of her works are very interesting and insightful, and people can interact with her works. Her work can also lead to deeper thinking. Many of her works also have many social values and contributions. This is Amy Franceschini, a wonderful artist and designer.
Work Cited
Artadia Non-profit organization, “Amy Franceschini,” 2005,
Anna Mcnay, “Amy Franceschini Interview,” September, 21, 2016,
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, “Amy Franceschini,”
