She is an artist who describes herself to a 'mad scientist' who builds, deconstructs, explores, and discovers exciting and innovative ways to bring life to a blank canvas.

And she has a new show where the works were inspired gritty and raw music styles of the early 1990s called 'Viva La Grunge', or 'long live grunge'.

"I grew up in the 90s listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam; I still listen to them today," said Ami Zanders

"You can take the girl out of the grunge era, but you can't take the grunge era out of the girl. I'm still heavily influenced by their music, which was raw and rough around the edges. My work can be described the same way. Nothing I do is ever perfect or pretty.

"It's off centre and all over the place at times. There are smudges; the plates are not wiped properly and there are always mistakes. I actually welcome the mistakes. It makes the work more intriguing and the process more fun.

"It helps me think of ways to fix something that has gone horribly wrong. It becomes a struggle between me and the medium, sometimes the medium wins, sometimes I win. It's fighting with the medium until you feel satisfied that the fight is over, then the picture is complete."

Ms Zanders says she is inspired by many things. "My children, Esmeralda and Bishop, my niece Quinn, tribal cultures, art created by children, drag queens, ancient cultures, geishas, reality TV, music, old movies, Howard Stern, New York, Flash Gordon, John Waters movies, Wildboyz, Jackass, just to name a few. The more outrageous and over the top the better!"

An honours graduate of both the International Fine Arts College and Kean University, she refuses to have her style defined, and when asked how she ended up exploring so many different mediums, she said: "I just love experimenting with different mediums.

"I want to learn how to do everything. Once I feel comfortable with a certain process I move on to see what else is out there and what else I can do to push the medium further. I transform into a mad scientist when I'm working."

Ms Zanders show will feature exuberant works made with silkscreen and intaglio. "There's something about long drawn out processes like silk screening, intaglio and weaving that appeal to me. It becomes more like mediation than actual work."

After becoming addicted to silk screening, she got into intaglio. "My print making professor, Julie Harris, would have the class do one print each week, and I'd do about seven a week.

"So [when] Julie saw how "So when Julie saw how much I loved printmaking she thought it best for me to make print making my concentration. Intaglio was just another print making process that I had to learn as a degree requirement, but I became addicted to that too."

Ms Zanders has lived in St. George's all her life and one of her intaglio prints on display is called 'Ye Olde Towne of St. George's'.

All artists have an obsessive-compulsive urge to create, Miss Zanders said. "I wake up with this constant need to make something. "When I see a blank canvas or a blank piece of paper I just want to fill it with something or glue something on it. I can sit down for hours and hours just playing with different textures and mediums and never get tired.

"Making art is what keeps me going. It makes me happy and keeps me sane. When I'm not creating I'm miserable."

Ms Zanders also teaches a children's class at the Bermuda Society of Arts called 'Out of the X-box' on Saturday. "I'm having so much fun," she said.

"I actually like teaching. I want to go to grad school so that I can teach at a university. It's so much fun getting people to like something that you enjoy so much.

"I'm going to be teaching workshops for Kaleidoscope Arts Foundation and Masterworks in the future.

"There is nothing more innocent, more energetic, and more emotional than art that comes from the purest of places."

In addition, she has a show featuring her weavings on display at the Rock Island Coffee shop and she will be in a group show at the BSoA with Gabrielle Fernandez and Keitha Bassett amongst others. And she also entered a woven piece in Masterworks Charman Prize.

Before linen, cotton and silk, Miss Zanders' chosen canvases were walls and other inanimate objects. "I don't remember my mom being very happy about me drawing on the walls and on the furniture," she said.

"But both my parents did encourage me. They were the ones who brought me art supplies and art books with Cezanne, Picasso and Modigliani. They also allowed me to go to school to study art instead of forcing me to do something practical like accounting or international business.

"It's a big risk sending your kid to school to do something, which many people see as a waste of time and very unstable."

The show opens tomorrow at the Common Ground Café from 5.30 p.m. until 7.30 p.m. and runs until March 18.