CLAY

It can shrink, expand and crack. It can dissolve into liquid or turn hard as bone. You can mold it, stretch it, collapse it or let it stand. It will take color in abundance or in the sparest moderation. It responds to patience and urgency. Nuance and force. It has a memory and will retain your most delicate or careless gesture. Its apotheosis is reached through fire. It will hold nutrients, wildlife, spirit, and myth. My objective is to explore where these inherent properties and the conceptual demands of my imagination meet. Earth, water, air, fire – a deep love of color - narrative, intuition, play and pleasure. These are the base elements of my current artistic focus.

BIOGRAPHY

My names is Ashley Stewart and I am an artist based in Washington, D.C..

A creative profession is not something I just fell into. It’s what I’ve wanted my entire life.

Through care, exposure, and space my creativity was nurtured by my family throughout my childhood in Washington, D.C. I was read to a lot - wake up stories to coax me into my day and bedtime stories to ease me into sleep. Sometimes I would make my way to my older sister’s room during the night and she would indulge me by making up another story, usually about animals. I was allowed to take over large areas of the house with my world building – I built towns for my hot wheels and giant homes for my dolls – I’d (notoriously) use anything in the house I could get my hands on. I was left in peace for hours and hours at a time to play and make believe. Dress up and impromptu performance were like breathing to me.

My parents had their own versions of creativity and exposed me to their continued learning and expression. My mother had a designer’s eye. She was passionate about design history and craft quality. She knew so much about architecture and could dream up interiors. She could sew and do upholstery. When you showed her something you loved in a magazine, etc., she was famous for saying, “we can make that.” I was often surprised by how much she knew about art history and how much our taste overlapped. She was wonderful at improvising through life. My father can make anything. He has the most beautiful garden, a keen sense of craft, particularly working with wood, and he has a poet’s heart. And although they had careers outside of the arts, I saw what it was to have an expression channeled into creative endeavors.

My childhood was also made up of almost 15 years of competitive gymnastics and piano. And so what emerged was someone who was partial to narrative, self-expression and precision.

In college at Rutgers University, I majored in art history and minored in both film studies and cultural anthropology – all of which, among other things, are about fantasy and the careful observation of the displays of human spirit, expression and endeavor. Human beings finding creative ways to withstand periods of intensity over vast sweeps of time.

When I graduated, I assumed I would go into the museum world. I did a museum studies certificate at Georgetown to see if I liked it. I interned at multiple Smithsonian museums, went abroad to work at the Guggenheim in Venice and the Biennale. When I returned home I planned to apply to art history grad programs…and yet…my instinct said no, your soul requires something different. The next several years were spent trying to find out what that “something else” was: I studied interior architecture, discovered a knack for creative writing, did three years of an acting conservatory, and trained in the healing arts of breath and energy work. All the time continuing to travel widely. Really what I wanted was to chart my own multi-disciplinary path, I just didn’t understand how.

It was a long journey to take without a known destination. I felt like I had “done it all”. I worked in an office during the day - doing what we all generally agreed to term “communications”. Where else do you stick the artist, the zebra in the pack? I did this for what felt like – which maybe was – a lifetime. In the classic hero’s tale, this was my desert exile. But the thing about exile is that deep in your heart you know that you are simply biding your time. And the truth is you have never actually done it all. There is always something new to explore.

In the summer of 2018 - based purely on a moment’s intuition – I signed up for my first adult ceramics class. A few years later I left my office job. The rest is currently being written.

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