#39. BRENDAN COYLE & AMANDA CURTIS - “Museum curators.”
Photo by: Elyssa Maxx
When Amanda Curtis first moved to Staten Island as a high schooler, she experienced a bit of a culture shock.
Before her mother, an eccentric, flighty artist, moved them, Amanda had grown up with her grandparents in an old-fashioned bed and breakfast in Maine that she affectionately calls “the inn.” Because of the inn’s theme, Amanda was dressed in Victorian clothing for most of her adolescence. Her childhood turned the already-creative Amanda into an eccentric and artistic teenager.
“All I knew was living with 80 year olds,” she laughs.
But then, Amanda’s stepfather got in to medical school on the island and so Amanda was sent to the local public high school. Where she’d come from, her school had had art classes of all different kinds. Students were encouraged to choose a medium they felt suited them best.
But at her new school in Staten Island, there was no art program or art classes. Amanda felt trapped. With no way to follow her passion sanctioned by school hours, she searched for other outlets.
“I’d cut class with the theatre group kids and we’d lay in the fields or rub paint on each other,” she says. “There was nothing else to express it.”
Her boyfriend, Brendan Coyle snorts beside her. “Classic Staten Island,” he says, shaking his head.
