Artist Biography
Ash began silversmithing and studio art in 2006, exhibiting in group shows throughout Austin until 2011, when she shifted her focus to academic training in biological anthropology. She earned her BFA from Texas State University in 2014 before returning to metalsmithing. In 2023, she expanded her practice to include larger sculptural works featuring hand-sawed, dreamlike scenes within shadowboxes and abstract forms designed to evoke empathetic response.
Her academic background informs a thoughtful approach to both jewelry and sculpture, grounded in an understanding of the body, material culture, and the lasting significance of personal and environmental adornment. While her jewelry emphasizes intricate, tightly rendered detail, her sculptural work allows the recurring forms and symbols to expand across space.
Ash produces jewelry in small, considered collections and select commissions, prioritizing craftsmanship, material integrity, and longevity. Each piece is created through a slow, hands-on process and is designed to be worn or displayed over time, becoming part of a personal archive where the wearer or environment impacts the respective piece even after it’s left the artist’s hands. These pieces are contemporary heirlooms that hold presence and value over time.
Artist Statement
My work explores the relationship between light, color, shape and texture as a means of creating an empathetic, embodied response in the viewer. Working primarily in metal across both sculpture and jewelry, I use the reflective and responsive nature of the material to reveal how changing light, shadows and spatial context impact both emotional perception and experience.
Within my jewelry work, each piece begins with a hand-drawn illustration, then comes to life through ancient techniques like chasing and repoussé or more unconventional methods such as hand-sawing, followed by either inlaying the delicate forms or carving into them. The result creates richly textured sculptures meant to be touched, worn, and lived in. Within my larger sculptural work, I explore sensations of floating, suspension, and untethering, using form and space to evoke states of weightlessness and transformation. Across both scales, my work draws from myth, magic, fantasy, and science, woven into an iconographic visual language that conveys a symbolic narrative to the viewer.