Scott Ashley

Conceptual artist Scott Ashley is known for using everyday objects and familiar cultural constructs to create provocative, emotionally charged multi-media works that challenge our personal and societal perceptions. Scott Ashley transforms our learned archetypes and paradigms into “extreme versions of themselves”. From hand knitted garden hoses and neon shovels to fumigating doll houses and cursed electric guitars he uses varied means to bring his concepts into the audiences’ view.

When observing the multi-media works from Scott Ashley, one can clearly see an understanding of vast and varied materials and processes. His work, though often critical, is not cynical and seems to come from a determination to express the personal, emotional and psychological states we all experience and also the deep connections we all have to the material world.  Scott Ashley’s work simultaneously examines the cognitive world and the physical world.  The results are strange and sometimes humorous manifestations that seem to have a foot in both realms.

While studying at the University of Washington, School of Fine Arts Scott Ashley developed a fascination with expressing these types of concepts through a multimedia approach; incorporating his love of sculpture, painting, printmaking and fiber art.  This approach was continued in his MFA studies of New Forms in New York at the Pratt Institute of Fine Art. Here he refined his approach to conceptual art; enjoying a new challenge with each project and learning to work with a different material allowing him to discover a new interpretation of the subject.