Samantha Lamph/Len

Samantha Lamph/Len
Riverside, California, USA

STATEMENT

My work begins with searching. Flipping through vintage magazines and books, pulling images that resonate in that moment, accumulating fragments whose relationship I don’t yet fully understand. I assemble these pieces until something true, usually about myself or my own memories, emerges in their composition: a meaning that couldn’t have been planned, only discovered.

The themes I return to again and again—identity, dreams and the subconscious, sexuality (and sensuality!), and the memories we carry that shape us—are ones that are more challenging to articulate through words. Through the assemblage, my collages help me express and synthesize these ideas with more immediacy and purity, because it works the way memory and emotion actually do: nonlinearly, in layers, and through juxtaposition rather than explanation.

I came to visual art by an unexpected route. Trained first as a writer in fiction and poetry, I set my creative life aside for years after my MFA. When I finally returned, it was collage that called to me, not language—though I do believe my collage practice will eventually lead me back to writing with new tools at my disposal.

Each piece has become an act of self-discovery, a way of bringing emotions and memories to light that I hadn’t known how to reach before. The process has been a healing one—and one that continues with each new composition.

My hope is that a viewer encounters the work and feels seen, that I have managed to articulate something they already knew or remembered deep down, but couldn’t find words for.

BIO

Samantha Lamph/Len is a published writer, budding collage artist, and mother of two from Riverside, California. She is also the creator of Memoir Mixtapes, a literary magazine that publishes creative nonfiction inspired by music from audiophiles around the world.

ARTIST CONTACT

EMAIL | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM

IMAGES