We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amy Hoskins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amy below.
Hi Amy, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I made it into a competitive artist entrepreneur program called Periscope, this past Spring. After the first session, the first presenter was talking with me afterwards. I showed him my website (www.amyhoskins.com). He asked what was the emotional draw or pull to my artwork. I thought, my story, my screenplay that I’ve had since 2018 — that is the most emotional of all my artwork.
Since then, I’ve been working on the idea of a short art film in 2023 about healing from child abuse, and a feature film in 2028 with the full visual story of Rebekah’s Closet.
Rebekah’s Closet started as a novel I self-published in 2011, on Amazon, Nook and Google. It is part memoir, and largely magic realism. The novel started as an art therapy project, and ended up 426 pages later!
If you would like to help make the short film a a reality, please go to my website homepage (www.amyhoskins.com) and there is a link there to my crowdfund there.
My hope for the novel, the short film and the feature film, is to save time for other people healing from the traumatic effects of child abuse. The underlying structure is the holistic healing model that has helped me so much. The overarching plot is Rebekah’s fragmented, surreal, magical sense of reality.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
On my website (www.amyhoskins.com) you can find my visual art (photography and painting) as well as my writings and monthly poetry open mic. I also have served as a community artist advocate, because I want to help bring visual art and writing to the children in my neighborhood.
My unique story is that I survived child sexual abuse, with many effects from the trauma. I am on federal disability because of it, no longer able to work full time.
My college education at Agnes Scott College in the 1980s made me a critical systems thinker. I worked for nonprofits for roughly 16 years.
With everything I create, I find beauty in unusual places, hoping to rekindle a sense of wonder.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
All of my visual art and writing is for art therapy. I have had solo and group shows in the DC area, New York City, and here in Nashville, Tennessee. I also had two trips to Amsterdam to showcase a unique partnership between my industrial photography and two computer program designers, for Philips HomeLab in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
When I was working full-time, I would carve out Sunday afternoons for art therapy. After 2006 when I was no longer working, it took a lot of adjustment to immerse myself in art with my new time.
Each medium is unique and fulfilling. Photography is an instant gratification. Painting takes the right mindset, but is more tangible and cathartic than photography, as I layer and layer acrylic paints to get the effect I seek. Poetry and writing come to me more frequently during the day — also tangible, and deeply soothing.
I feel a responsibility as a creative to help make the world better.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
It took years to find the right trauma-informed therapist, by 2004. I had been in therapy off and on since 1984. Even with the right mental health diagnoses, I still had so much painstaking hard work on myself to be functional. I had to go on lots of medication, and I still have days coping with depression and flashbacks from my childhood.
Creativity has made such a huge difference in my life, to overcome the traumas I survived growing up, from 1964-1987 when I graduated from Agnes Scott College.
Now that I’m making films about my experience, I have come full circle. I’m able to help educate about the effects of severe childhood trauma, de-stigmatize getting mental health care, and tell a positive healing story.
If I can do it, so can you!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.amyhoskins.com
- Instagram: amyhoskinscc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amy.jackson.3152
- Twitter: amyhoskinscc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj8o4iIYs3hkQFh2bc5k2XA