Artist Statement

Amy C. Evans is an award-winning artist, writer, and documentarian based in Houston, Texas. She graduated from the city’s acclaimed High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA), holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. Amy’s paintings have appeared in Southern Living, Southern Cultures, and on CNN’s Eatocracy and the Oxford American blog. Her writing has appeared in Saveur, The Bitter Southerner, The Local Palate, and Cornbread Nation 5: The Best of Southern Food Writing. Amy built the documentary program at the Southern Foodways Alliance, headquartered at the University of Mississippi, where she served as their lead oral historian for more than a decade. The Mississippi Historical Society has twice recognized her work, and Food & Wine magazine named Amy one of the “most fearsome talents” in the culinary world. She returned home to Houston in 2014 and embarked on an exciting freelance career, utilizing her varied skills and interests to explore new methods of storytelling. This experimentation birthed Amy’s groundbreaking multimedia project, “My Houston,” which documents her hometown through original paintings, archival photographs, and oral history interviews. Her first book, co-authored with Martha Hall Foose and published by Chronicle Books, A Good Meal Is Hard to Find: Storied Recipes from the Deep South, is set for release on April 28, 2020. Amy’s favorite pie is sweet potato.