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A.S. Ashley's sunbathing cat.


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GENERAL EDUCATION:
Library Elementary; Newsstand High
COLLEGE:
B.A., Ernie Kovacs University of Visual Arts
M.F.A., Rod Serling School of Metaphysics
APPRENTICESHIP:
Mikey, Leo (and all the other dead guys).

Born and raised in Southern California, Ashley is a fourth generation from Pasadena who lived in the same dairy farmhouse his great-grandparents built facing Colorado Boulevard. Ashley has been a professional artist and worked with numerous artist communities for more than five decades. Ashley’s current studio practice is in the South Bay area of Los Angeles County.
Ashley’s interest in art began in childhood, with an obsession with Renaissance master drawings, which he copied endlessly until his introduction to painting at the age of fourteen. Ashley’s first solo show was with Bank of America when he was sixteen, and was the youngest artist to tour the U.S. with the National Watercolor Society.
By 1979, Ashley had expanded his practice to include painting, mixed media, assemblages, installations and performance art. He has curated scores of art exhibits, served as a board member for the dA Center for the Arts, presided over Pomona’s Arts Colony Association, co-authored two public art ordinances and was an arts correspondent for the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper.

 

PAINTING
You're A Very Bad Man!
2013  You’re A Very Bad Man
* * *
Using political, cultural and social imagery, Ashley’s paintings represent an iconoclastic approach to our emblematic society. Satirically worshipped, the scope of subjects run wild while applying a broad range of styles and techniques to give a unique naturalism to otherwise conflicting subjects.



MIXED MEDIADelicious_Deterrents2019  Delicious Deterrents
* * *
Ashley’s mixed media pieces are exactly that, “mixed,” a thoroughly random array of works, combining materials and applications often new to the artist. It’s within these most uncertain areas that experimentation does it’s best work.

 

ASSEMBLAGE / INSTALLATION shopping with the kids_TAM-42021  Torrance Art Museum/Shoebox Projects, High Beams #4
* * *
Ashley’s assemblages and installations are an amalgam of found and otherwise acquired objects arranged and constructed to mirror social circumstances and practices.

PERFORMANCE ART
protest performance-10
1979  Festival of the Arts, The Art Abortion, Laguna Beach, CA
* * *
Rather than serving a captive audience, Ashley prefers the spontaneity and chance that goes with “street” or “guerrilla” performances. His method of translating form to function gained national notoriety when he was expelled from the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts for the controversial nature of his art. Subsequently, his reactive performance drew the attention of the news media, the support of the ACLU, and a landmark Superior Court ruling in Ashley’s favor protecting artists’ First Amendment rights and leading to the restructuring of the Festival’s bylaws.

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