Notes
I Am Shee: Original Recordings, 1979-1987 is a musical anthology and image capsule surveying the work of New York vocalist, composer, and visual artist Amy Sheffer. From the late 60 to early 90s, Sheffer wrote, recorded, and privately pressed a series of albums defined by her full-hearted, full-on vibrato vocals and an imaginative scenery set by various loft jazz ensembles. Freedom to Spend’s collection features selections from Sheffer’s Sanctuary Mine, Where’s Your Home?, and We’um, along with a print companion of album ephemera, photo documentation, poetry, and hallucinogenic drawings. Sheffer’s output is evidence of a life fully charged and receptive to free-flowing energies — every object a portal, every sound an attunement.
Born in Richmond, Virginia, raised in Washington DC and then Great Neck, Long Island with her younger sister, Sheffer was encouraged by her parents to learn classical violin. Her father was a patent attorney who also played classical and popular music on the family piano, and her mother took art lessons and privately pursued painting. In high school, Sheffer earned an art scholarship to NYU where under Robert Kaupelis she explored painting in a meaningful way. Sheffer then transferred to Cornell, where the rigid forms and structure of the Bauhaus movement led her to Cooper Union to study abstraction. Around this time, and at the recommendation of her cousin and founder of the Kinsey Institute, June Reinisch, Amy participated in LSD therapy under Dr. Mortimer Hartman, which influenced her painting into even further psychedelic and fantastic realms.
Sheffer moved to the Lower East Side in the late 60s after receiving a degree in art education at NYU. She would live there, and the East Village, for the following three decades. It was here that she found a new kind of freedom in music. The social aspect drew her in, and the musicians, many operators in the free NYC’s legendary loft jazz scene, recognized and embraced her unbridled spirit. She sang with Steve Tintweiss’ group Purple Why and alongside Patty Waters on Marzette Watts’ 1968 ensemble album for Savoy Records. Sometimes Sheffer would sing all day long, and she found vocalizing raised her health and consciousness. New York City below 14th Street was also lush with performance art and experimental theater at the time, and Sheffer staged productions and performed at The Living Theatre, and participated in collaborative multimedia events at Life Cafe, CBGB, and the Brecht Forum.
Sheffer began composing her own music on a piano that entered through the window of her fifth-floor walk-up on East 6th street. Her apartment was elevated to a makeshift atelier where musicians and neighbors like Curtis Fields, David Durrah, and Butch Johnson regularly stopped by for impromptu sessions. When her music would leave the confines of her home, performing remained an interior experience for Sheffer. Though her presence was striking, and sometimes eccentric, she would often display art on and around the stage to provide a visual diversion and enhancement. The paintings’ effects were felt by her fellow musicians. William Parker described Sheffer’s compositions as “art music”; inventions all her own and an extension of her artwork. He could see the shapes of sounds moving and the colors in her voice.
The hallucinatory, exploratory environments of these live experiences are documented in the selections of I Am Shee. “Yellow Wings” and “Quiet Land”, taken from Sheffer’s debut album Sanctuary Mine (1980), feature her haunting lyrics over cloudy compositions, shimmering and shaking with Tintweiss, Fields, Kenny Gill, and Billy Mintz’s improvisation. “Amerasia” and the title track from her second album, Where’s Your Home (1985), represent a search for new forms, with musicians like Durrah and Johnson on piano, Parker on bass, John Disselt on reeds and electric piano, and Chakaq Johnson on drums. Later, Sheffer recorded “From the Warm”, “Into the Warm” and “We’Um” — each layering textures and moods into atmospheres and spells. These tracks from We’um (1987) were centered around the string trio of Parker, Lois Schlesinger, and Billy Bang, among others.
With the exception of live painting performances, visual art was usually a more solitary pursuit for Sheffer. When painting, she would follow visions passing through her mind, and as they were passed, she would pick up on the ones to paint; with colors luminous and figures organic and morphing. Acrylic works on canvas and mixed media on paper run hot and moody to calm and soft. Portraits and bodies emerge from fields of color and shift to instruments, animals and demons. The play of scale within compositions gives an allegorical aura to even the most abstract fields of texture and light. Sheffer’s paintings grace each of the three covers of her albums surveyed in this collection, and line drawings fill the jackets and liners that surround each. Her name and hand touch every aspect; her label imprint, I Am Shee, is an affirmation of the independent spirit. This collection is a conjuring in her words: “Thou art an art.”
Now 81 years old, Amy Sheffer has returned to the home of her childhood in Great Neck where she continues to play piano, sing, and paint, surrounded by her artwork from decades and mere days passed. I Am Shee is timed with the first-ever survey of Sheffer’s paintings at the White Columns gallery in New York City, showing September 16 through October 25, 2025.