Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Amber Summers has had a life largely determined by fate.
Even her talent for art came as a “natural instinct,” the Wilkes-Barre-based artist says.
“When I was two, I was coloring perfectly inside the lines.”
Since her graduation from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts in 2000 with a degree in biology with an art minor, a whirlwind series of fated events has led Summers on what seems to be a tiresome journey. After some time at the Bermuda Biological Station and Duke Marine Lab, she went on to unexpected post-graduate studies with blood substitutes at the National Institute of Health. She has held various jobs, ranging from office manager to bartender, from art teacher to holistic health care instructor, including manager at the Greenwich Polo Club in Greenwich, Conn. It was there that someone encouraged her to show her artwork in a local gallery — she ended up selling 11 pieces.
In the fall of 2006, she moved back home to Northeastern Pennsylvania, and it wasn’t until the fall of 2007 that she began more actively pursuing gallery space and working simultaneously to both create and promote her art, which consists of largely abstract oil, mural work, watercolor and fabric sculpture.
Summers is currently showing at Outrageous in Shavertown until the end of August and will also show at Pierce Street Gallery in Kingston towards the end of the month. She hopes to hold a wine-and-cheese reception at the beginning of October at Pierce Street.
“I can’t be in a corporate job; I just can’t be inspired in that kind of atmosphere,” Summers says.
This incredibly unpredictable lifestyle, of course, has been reflected in the artist’s work.
“That lifestyle is very emotionally challenging, and art has been my outlet for that,” she explains. With several years of changing jobs and cities, it was difficult for her to find time to create anything at all. “In order to create art, you need a peaceful place in your mind and in your home,” she says.
It seems that since the artist has returned to Pennsylvania, she has had plenty of time and opportunity to begin creating again.
Her work has been hanging in galleries every month, sometimes two or three galleries at a time. Recently, she sold a piece that had been hanging in a Ferrari and Bentley dealership in Greenwich.
“That was really exciting, because my piece was sitting next to a 1.2 million dollar car, and I got great reviews from that show,” she explains.
It seems her return to the Wyoming Valley was uniquely fated as well.
“It was really weird! As soon as I moved home, this big arts community started to grow in Wilkes-Barre,” she says. “It was perfect timing.”
“Arts YOUniverse has been instrumental” in helping Wilkes-Barre’s arts scene develop, Summers says. Soon after she returned, Summers showed some of her work in a gallery there in that multi-purpose space.
After living in areas like New England that have more visible community support for the arts, she was proud to be involved in the Wilkes-Barre arts community once again.
Just as she was excited to be involved with the community building mission of Arts YOUniverse, Summers is always excited to lend a hand to others who approach her asking for help with their own charitable projects.
“When anybody asks me to donate work for an organization, I like to give them 100 percent of the proceeds,” she says.
Recently, she has been showing some of her pieces in the Scarlet Lounge and the tapas bar Sangria at Bentley’s in Ashley. A large portion of the sales of any of the artwork there will be given to the John Heinz Children’s Rehabilitation Center, where children whose parents don’t have insurance are able to receive therapy and treatments as well as prosthetics. By working with one of the managers there, Summers is able to donate an extra 25 percent of proceeds on top of the 25 percent already promised by Bentley’s.
Simply donating artwork to a cause isn’t enough for Summers. One project in her near future will be teaming up with some of her other artist friends to do ceiling or wall murals in children’s hospitals, possibly at John Heinz. She hopes to bring together the therapeutic nature of creating art that benefits her and the healing power that viewing art can provide for children.
“I spent some time in a hospital when I was five years old, and it was very traumatizing,” she explains. “Having artwork on the walls is so engaging to children, and it would have helped me a lot.”
She also says that children respond more intuitively to her work, especially her series of spirit animals, in which she says children can see the animals more clearly than any adults.
w