perennial

SNAP is pleased to present perennial, featuring new work by Amanda Lilleston. The exhibition runs from August 30 – September 27, 2025 at SNAP Gallery. 

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 30, 7-9 pm

Artist Talk: Tuesday, September 23, 6-7 pm.

Online delivery via zoom : https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/Opaxlj-hRJK8kuijxG8Jww

Artist Statement

A holobiont is a host organism and its associated organic community functioning as a single ecological unit. This concept grounds my work, which explores interconnected systems of biology, ecology, and physiology through personal, embodied experience.

Our bodies are a porous, adaptive environment. I learned this living with an autoimmune disorder—where the body confuses “self” and “non-self”—and this notion intensified through pregnancy and motherhood, when the boundaries between my body and others became even more fluid. Our bodies are open systems, shaped by what lives within us and what surrounds us.

I think of the body as a perennial holobiont—a living ecology that cycles through change, breakdown, renewal, and return. Like the blackberries, lupine, milkweed, and crocuses growing around my home, the body is seasonal, resilient, and continually remade.

My process reflects this layered, cyclical reality. Through drawing, relief carving, and printing, I methodically map my own biology and the morphology of the organisms that live around me. I then collage these prints—placing seemingly disparate elements side by side: anatomical forms with botanical or zoological imagery. I create compositions that resist fixed boundaries. Fragmentation becomes a form of integration. These juxtapositions reflect how complexity, contradiction, and connection coexist within us.

The work suggests that we are not separate from nature, but active participants in its rhythms—bodies shaped by and shaping the living world around us.

About the Artist

Amanda Lilleston is a visual artist living in Maine. Her work depicts a long and evolving relationship with human anatomy, physiology and ecology. Using drawing, carving, and printing, Lilleston transforms imagery of the body into adapting forms and structures. She received her MFA from University of Michigan and a BA in biology from Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. She shows her prints nationally and internationally: recently at the 2025 Atlanta Print Biennial, and upcoming at the DI CARTA / PAPERMADE 6th edition: International Contemporary Art Biennale, Museo Civico Palazzo Fogazzaro, Schio, Italy. She currently teaches printmaking at Colby College.