Amiee Byrne turns discarded everyday items into hyper-realistic ceramic artworks

Amiee Byrne is something of a creative polymath – she’s a conceptual art director, stylist and bespoke prop creator. When she moved from Melbourne to LA seven years ago, she added yet another string to her already very full bow: ceramics. But they’re not just any old ceramics. Amiee’s pieces are hyper-realistic renditions of everyday objects: a tightly coiled extension cable, a spotted banana peel, a flattened drinks can, a series of tapes – all at different stages of usage – and (quite an emotional one) a very sad looking teddy-bear. At first glance, you likely wouldn’t know they’re all made out of clay; the clever blend of carefully selected textures, tones and glazes plays wonderful tricks on the mind.

When Amiee first moved to LA she didn’t have a car, and in such a notoriously large and freeway-heavy city, this meant the artist ended up spending a lot of time wandering around. One day she stumbled across a community ceramics studio “peeped through the window” and felt intrigued – she signed up for a class and ended up forging an instant connection with the medium. Although, at the end of her first class, Amiee felt as though a certain itch wasn’t being scratched, and she asked the teacher if she could make something other than the classic pottery-first timer form of a pinch pot – she had a pretty unique vision in mind: “I had an idea of making a potato chip hanging mobile to fill the space in the loft I was living in at the time.”

The next week, Amiee brought along a crinkle potato cutter, rolled a ball of clay into the shape of a potato and got cutting. “It absolutely did not work,” Amiee says, but she persisted and managed to create something chip-like. “The combination of being able to translate what is in my brain with my hands and the challenge of working out the process of how to achieve it was so exciting for me.”

Usually, Amiee will spend weeks obsessing over an idea, saving references and writing endless lists, but when it comes to inspiration she’s remained pretty fixated on the everyday. “I want the pieces to have a story behind them, like they’ve lived a life, perhaps been discarded,” she says. “I like to give them a second chance and become a piece of art.” Everyday items aren’t just the inspiration for Amiee’s work, they’re brought into her process too. “Nothing makes me happier than trial and error and thinking about what household object or piece of trash I can turn into a tool to get the finish I am after,” she says.

Sometimes, however, no tool can create the effect Amiee is envisioning. As the artist found out (the hard way) when she started creating her life-sized cat scratching tower. “They’re such an interesting object that people choose to have in their homes – some might say an eyesore (me),” says Amiee. “ You always see them on the side of the road, or when walking past peoples houses with open curtains. They’re always in a prime location – a front window so the cats can enjoy a view.”

To create the perfect texture, Amiee devised the perfect method. However, there were two issues – it was very labour intensive… and it made her palms bleed. She worked alongside the design-build studio Machine Histories to find a solution, but after trying multiple methods – pasta tools, industrial potato mashers, and old book press – nothing proved as effective, and Amiee went back to lacerating her hands. At least, as Amiee tells us, “the eyesore now lives in my house”. But the dedication doesn’t end there. Her piece Yes Smoking – an ashtray brimming with used cigarettes – was brought to life by Amiee physically putting glaze on her lips and ‘smoking’ each one to achieve the lipstick effect: “It was disgusting.” (Please don’t try this at home!)

So, in the past seven years, what’s the biggest take-away Amiee has had since working with ceramics? “It will make you cry,” she ends. “You must try your hardest not to get attached to a piece. But you will. There are so many stages and variables where things can go wrong. I still cry but have learned to cry less and now see my failures as opportunities to make it better.”