Ashley Blazer is an installation, assemblage, and fiber artist as well as painter who has exhibited in the American South, particularly in Texas. She has been published in The Austin Chronicle, VoyageAustin, and Quaranzine. Recent exhibitions include Good Dad Studios in Austin, Big Medium’s Austin Studio Tour, Cloud Tree Studios & Gallery, Lawndale Art Center, all in Austin, and the Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina.
Similar to a fluxus artist, Ashley values the importance of process in her works. She carefully chooses mediums in order to express notions of harmony, balance, connectedness, and nature. From steer skulls to folds of fiber, these bold works create dynamic compositions which push the boundaries of visual communication through rapid color formation and material texture. The works are quite varied and can range from writing on bones in one piece while concocting ‘fiber paintings’ with folds of fabric in other artworks.
The strongest works in Ashley’s portfolio tend to be her assemblage installations containing cow bones. These pieces, although few in number, provoke notions of death and substance as they are integrated with fabric, writing and displayed in a manner to invade spatial intervals. Capturing art with bones seems to be an unusual direction, one which should be thoroughly investigated. The integration of fiber with bones leaves a contemplative Southwestern aesthetic, implicating the deep heat of her Texas environment. Integration of decayed biological material with natural fiber invokes deep conceptual musings on the purpose of expression in art through material. We could interpret such techniques as a means to communicate the impact of thought on the lingering prospect of death and finality.
Saeculum (Elevated) (pictured above) remains Ashley’s most boldest piece. The work can clearly be described as an installation as the artwork has an intention of being suspended in the air with fiber material. These bones are carefully crafted into a sculpture and contain mysterious writing passages which seem to imply improvisational thoughts with text such as ‘I am part of this’ and ‘Albert Einstein’. The written word combined with a three-dimensional installation and bones remains a unique work of art which should be further explored.
Ashley Blazer redefines notions of installation, by combining aspects of assemblage (salvaged objects) with fiber. As an artist, she seems to convey a great sense of curiosity with her process and how to integrate various methods and mediums to create visually striking pieces which communicate complex concepts such as mortality and the purpose of compositional texture. Ashley Blazer expands an approach to our realization towards varying creative principles in image-making such as colluding concepts with purpose of material to create holistic and new interpretations of subject matter.
