Bio

Amy Caterina was born in 1973, in, the Honeymoon Capital of the World, Niagara Falls, NY. In 2002, she received her M.F.A. in Photography from CSU Fullerton.

After college, Caterina co-founded Rat Powered Films with fellow artist Bob Pece, an organization dedicated to the presentation of art films from around the globe.

In early 2005, Caterina started knitting and began Pseudo-Sod, a series that quickly emerged as a major component in her evolving oeuvre of mixed media installations. She was selected to be the artist-in-residence at the Huntington Beach Art Center in conjunction with the exhibition “MANufacture”; during her residency she displays mixed media knitted “grass” covered deer and moose, beside four cemetery plot sized sections of “grass.” The Pseudo-Sod car cover was also featured in 2005 for the first time and presented in various locations throughout Orange County.

In 2008, Caterina was the artist-in-residence at the CSUF Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California, opening her first solo exhibition titled, “This used to be real estate, now it’s only fields and trees.”

In 2009, Caterina and Pece (Rat Powered Films) received a grant from the Downtown Santa Ana Business Council and National Alliance of Mental Illness Orange County.  They have several film projects in the works including “Consumption,” a collection of short films interviewing people who work in the field of mental health, consumers, and people who have experienced the stigma of mental illness, “Art-as-Anodyne,” interviews with men and women  in conjunction with A Window Between Worlds, a non-profit organization dedicated to using art to help end domestic violence.

She currently teaches traditional photography, filmmaking, digital photography, and art history at Santa Ana College, Goldenwest College, Coastline College and Irvine Valley College. Caterina also works as a freelance curator.

She was recently an artist-in-residence at Northern Illinois University Art Museum, DeKalb, Illinois and a part of the in/Visible exhibition and co-curator of the Smogdance Film Festival in Pomona.  Summer 2010 she will be in a 2 person show with Shannon Faseler at the SCA Gallery in Pomona, and The Tree Show at Orange Coast College.  In August she was chosen as the first artist-in-residence at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine.  She is also an avid yarn bomber.