William Lee Ashley is a Colorado native who works in mixed media, both two dimensional as well as three dimensional. This will be his second solo exhibit with Anthology Fine Art and will be displayed from October 25-December 21, 2013.
“Memory” contains three series of new work that all address the paradigm of memory.
The first series is titled “Estate Sale”. This is the focal series of the show and deals with the transformation of memory within our city through gentrification. Will has constructed a set of dioramas that show the intimacy of the the modern estate sale. Using the highly personal and often valueless items left over from these “sales”, Will reconstructs the perceived memory of the life that once existed, embellishing and juxtaposing them with his own painted marks. He invites the viewer reconstruct that memory on their own and ask themselves who these people might have been. The result is a haunting yet beautiful homage to memories that once existed in the neighborhoods of our city but are rapidly being replaced.
The second series is titled “Mountains”. This series is a collection of mixed media paintings that are extrapolated from the artists own memory. The images deal with his own childhood sense of wonder regarding the beauty of nature. Will explores the fleetingness of his own memories of childhood and what they mean to him now as he raises his own son and attempts to recreate those memories through new experiences in nature with his family.
The final series will be titled “Writings”. This body of work revolves around the old and beautiful walls in European cities, and how they are akin to public “notepads”. Will uses photos and mixed media painting to show how these walls hold the memories of multiple generations of graffiti-writers ( both modern and ancient). These “writings” alter the way we experience these cites and have become an unofficial public memory of these great places.
