Amy’s Artistic History

Six Wings by Skrocki Design comprises two distinct artists - Amy and Tanner Skrocki. Who blend influences from fairy tales, to mythology, learning about their heritages and travels to historic sites and the beauty of Canada, mixed with contemporary influences. They hope their items will inspire creativity in anyone using them in their day-to-day activities and hobbies. They specifically make items based off their own artistic identities and their own passions, including fashion, music, writing, drawing, photography, home decor and cooking etc. they predominately work with artisan leathers, metal, paper and gemstones.

“Skrocki Design- a design house featuring wearable art inspired by artifacts, fantasy and passion…[gives] us a glimpse into the fine art of hard work and the hard work of fine art.” – T8N Magazine.

Six Wings by Skrocki Design has done hundreds of craft and art shows. But the start of Six Wings was originally from a simple origin - Amy creating items to help recover from a spinal injury to increase her dexterity and crippling anxiety. With aspirations to create the items she imagined.

She also wanted to explore the stories she wrote as a child based on how she felt about her own identity having mixed backgrounds from a Indigenous Mother and Polish Father, and ones she created from years of trying to recover and cope with the significant chronic pain she was in (and still is) and the loss of an important part of her life because of her accident.

Since she had no knowledge of metal, leather, pattern making, film making and only some drawing, painting and photography skills - Amy didn’t know where to start to become an artist, so she started with craft shows hoping to earn money to invest in tools and knowledge. Amy did her first craft show in 2008 and casually did shows as she completed enough pieces for a booth. During this time she learned and honed her skills in glass casting and bead making, wire wrapping and experimenting with other materials. As she is almost entirely self taught, the process of learning and experimenting has been over a decade-long process in various mediums and as she learned, she sold her work to buy more materials for new pieces and to create her ideas. 

It wasn’t until 2012 she took shows and her creations more seriously and began to teach herself the techniques and processes to create the path to where she and Tanner are now. 

Up until 2014, Tanner was working full time and going to university for his bachelor and master’s degree. In his spare time, he worked tirelessly on learning the processes and techniques from Amy and setting up and helping her sell her work at various shows. They recognized one of his passions and that was customer service and trying to display Amy’s artwork and designs in the best way he could think of.

In 2014, after the birth of her and her husband’s daughter, Seraphim, Amy took a year long break from many of the major craft shows to finally start creating the work she had dreamt of making to express herself artistically. During this time, Tanner began to seriously work on learning and creating the metal work entirely by himself and hone several of his leather creation skills. Which has made him a master metal etcher and an expert in some areas of leather work.

In 2015, Amy’s developed artistic style was refined and she presented her wearable artwork on models at an event and she did this again in 2016 while working on learning photography and creating the stories to accompany each wearable art piece. During this time, Tanner quit his full-time job to do as many shows as he could, which was up to 3 times a week at various small markets and events.

In 2016, Amy had her first ever solo gallery show, displaying her work at the Alberta Craft Council under the title “Stories Brought to Life.” This show shared the large scale wearable art pieces and some stories behind each item. 

From 2017-2019 Amy spent the time honing her skills, in drawing and illustrating, creating patterns to expand her skills and push the limits of creation. All while learning to refine her photography skills and learning to tell stories through video and film. This was the start of her first real YouTube videos with her husband Tanner hosting many of those, on helping others start their craft business and tutorials, which have garnered almost 500k views. This lead to sharing one of her short stories through film, for a short film contest, which she won. This was entirely written, shot and edited by her with the help of her husband Tanner, who acted and created the music for it. At this time Amy’s chronic pain begun getting worse, and she knew there was another issue. 

In 2020, during the beginning of the pandemic, Amy took another year long break to focus on her daughter’s homeschooling, write stories and peruse other interests with their daughter. 

In 2021, Amy decided not to wait any longer and share her passions in storytelling, artwork and film and applied for the TELUS STORYHIVE open call opportunity for beginner film makers, which was to create a short series for their on demand customers. Her pitch was successful, and with Tanner’s help, she wrote, directed, self filmed, edited and photographed the creation and story behind one of her wearable art pieces. 

The award of this project inspired her to want to share another story and another wearable art piece. This time in a dramatized short film. Where the story of the piece would be told with a film crew and actress. This led her to winning a grant from the Edmonton Arts Council and The Canadian Council for the Arts to film, produce, share the story and make the wearable art for the short film. That will hopefully be released in 2023.

After completing the first season of TELUS STORYHIVE beginner project, she applied and won the next project - STORYHIVE - VOICES 1.0. This time she created an episodic series which she choose to focus on other artists, who were invisibly disabled, their story and what needs to be changed for accessibility in the arts. In this series, she also included community supports that were already making things accessible and helping the community. During the filming of this series, Amy was diagnosed with a rare brain stem condition which causes signification nerve pain, eye, ear and facial problems. Which led Tanner to physically create more of the leather and metal items and Amy to focus on her artwork for the pieces and the creation of her film and other projects.

After the submission of her TELUS STORYHIVE project, they awarded her a second season, which is in the filming stages now set to release in the summer of 2023. 

In 2022, the first season of her series was finished for Telus which was titled “Crafting a Professional Career in the Arts: Against the Odds.” and was released on TELUS OPTIK TV on November 23, 2022.

Amy’s latest collection of artwork, for Tanner and her leather and metal work, is based on the magical side of nature, moments that may seem small, that are tender and beautiful glimpses of animals and plants caught in time. With these images, included on their metal and leather items, she has self-published several journals and activity books for adults and children.