User:Vinyloscar/sandbox

Background
Lynda Faye Peek was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the fourth of six daughters. Her father, Norman Vance Peek, was a singer with the Deep South Boys. She was a creative child and knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist. She met African American painter Hale Woodruff, whom she cited as an influence on her work, when she was about 10 years old and made her first sale at the age of 13. She created still lifes from yarn and burlap bags that were included in a furniture display at Rich's Department Store in Atlanta. When a customer purchased the furniture, he assumed that her work was included in the sale.

Peek graduated from Georgia State University in Atlanta in the 1970s with a B.A. degree in journalism and psychology. She changed her name to Amalia K. Amaki in 1978 just prior to moving to New Mexico where she obtained a B.A. degree from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in photography and art history. Amaki earned her M.A. degree in modern European and American art and a Ph.D. in twentieth-century American art and culture from Emory University in Atlanta in 1994. Amaki has taught art history at Spelman College, Morehouse College and Atlanta College of Art in Atlanta, Georgia; Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia; and North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, Georgia. In 2001, she became Curator of the Paul R. Jones Collection of African American Art at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware where she was on the faculty in the Art History and Black Studies Departments until 2007.[3] After leaving that position, she taught art, art history, and visual studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama until 2012.