Amber McKay Cruz was born in Tokyo, Japan and grew up in Fountain, Colorado. In 2017, she received her BA in Visual Arts at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Cruz works predominantly in sculpture, creating with materials such as domestic objects and food as a way to examine memory and labor within the home. She will complete an MFA in Studio Art at American University in 2021. Cruz currently lives and works in Washington, D.C..

Often times the everyday objects in our lives function without being noticed. Seen as banal in their materiality, the items that construct our homes seem to fade into the background. What stories do these objects tell? What are the intimate histories of objects that are easily replaced and frequently disposed of? What does it mean to let those stories and histories fall to the wayside as they recede into the backdrop of our lives? By leveraging the innate utility and purposes of domestic objects and food, I explore complex relationships and familial rituals. Taking soft, crocheted items and dipping them into a caramel-like mixture, the objects emit an overwhelming sweetness. Materials meant to comfort converge and disrupt one another in their merging. The material shifts as the food ages and the artwork changes as if it were to have a life of its own.