Chris Ann Ambery is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist and educator whose practice spans drawing, painting, printmaking, and alternative photographic processes. Her recent work focuses on non-toxic approaches to printmaking and experimental photography, including Solarplate etching.
Ambery earned an MFA in Printmaking from LIU Post and a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design, and also studied with the Passalaqua School of Drawing and Illustration. She has worked with master printmaker Dan Welden and has maintained an active studio practice in both New York and Florida.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including presentations in the United States, Hong Kong, and Korea. Her work has been featured in exhibitions including the Heckscher Museum of Art’s Long Island Biennial and the Changwon University International Exchange Arts Festival in Korea, and is held in collections including Stony Brook University Hospital, the Long Island University Art Department, and numerous private collections.
Ambery has received the Marilyn Goldstein and Jacqueline Frank Award for Graduate Art History, an O’Malley Grant in support of her graduate printmaking work, and the Women’s Studio Workshop Award through the Inspiration Plus Foundation.
For more than a decade, she has taught drawing, painting, printmaking, and art history to teens and adults, combining a strong technical foundation with an emphasis on experimentation and the expressive possibilities of different media. Her teaching experience includes LIU Post, St. Joseph’s University, Suffolk Community College, Nassau Community College, the Art League of Long Island, and East End Arts.
“Art is a journey—a connection between where we are, where we have been, and where we are headed. I often begin with an idea, but as I work, I start to think through my hands, allowing the process to lead me into intricate layers of residual memory. By letting go of preconceived notions, I embrace uncertainty and allow each work to reveal its own direction.”
— Chris Ann Ambery, 2026
Chris’s solo exhibition explores the evanescence of memory—the way a thought, person, place, or experience can briefly consume our attention before gradually receding, only to resurface when unexpectedly triggered. Inspired by landscape, the works are not representations of specific locations but meditations on the residual memories, sensations, and emotions that remain after encountering them. Each image becomes a space where memory shifts between presence and absence, clarity and disappearance.
Working intuitively, Chris often begins with an idea or intention but allows the process itself to guide the work toward an uncertain outcome. This openness is central to the exhibition, which brings together a series of Solarplate etchings and wet cyanotypes, two processes shaped by sunlight, water, time, and chance.
Solarplate etching offers a less-toxic approach to printmaking, using sunlight or UV light to expose and develop the printing plate. Chris works with non-toxic inks and frequently incorporates hand-dyed papers, adding layers of color, texture, and material variation. Wet cyanotype, a camera-less photographic process, allows for an even more spontaneous and expressive approach. Natural materials, spices, and everyday household elements interact with sensitized paper, sunlight, and water to produce unpredictable traces, washes, and impressions.
Presented together, these works reflect the fluid and elusive nature of remembering. Their atmospheric surfaces suggest landscapes that feel simultaneously familiar and unplaceable—fragments of experience transformed through time, material, and memory. The exhibition will feature approximately twenty Solarplate etchings and wet cyanotypes, ranging from intimate 12 × 12-inch works to larger pieces measuring up to 36 × 48 inches, including triptych.
To learn more about artist Chris Ann Ambery, please visit www.chrisannambery.com.