About
My artwork is rooted in domesticity and travel. I use “to move” in different ways – the need to remember and forget my brother, flee from a father, define possessions as important or trash. I have moved 32 times. Home is holy and sanctioned, private and wary. I visit religious places, to experience the architecture and accumulated energy. Holy joins domestic through similarities of habit, memories and decorations. I wish to expand the concept, using found, natural and architectural components with a vein of personal and mass travel. The drawn-to and repelled-from danger dynamic continues to have a voice in my work. Line quality is crucial, be it ink, welds or sutures. Materials and scale choices vary; I love the hand-held, because regardless of the materials as precious or found object/scrap, the ability to turn and caress the object draws attention to details, memory and potential. I also use human scale. I create sculptures or installations which invite viewers to interact, reposition the work and reframe how they encounter space. In my newest works, mountains balance on wheels, contrasting the very stable yet contained risk and mobility of earthquakes. I treat doors as portals, manipulating their intended structure as egress spaces. And then, similar to Surrealism's changing scale, alter door segments to treat them as hinged rock faces, relating back to mountains. While I predominately term myself sculptor, I also write poetry, paint, fire spin, shoot travel photography and dabble in sound-art – capturing lost sounds in relationships.
Liz Ashe
