Rachel Ashe
“I love the idea of hanging Rachel Ashe’s work in my hallway so its calming effect can wash over me every time I move from room to room.”
— Sandra Botnen, curator
“I have a loud mind, so detailed work helps suspend my thoughts.”
The artist for Day 8 is Rachel Ashe. Originally from Ontario, with formal training in the Creative Photography program at Humber College. Her most inspiring job as a photographer was at the Textiles Museum of Canada in Toronto where she worked for three and a half years to digitize their permanent collection. As an example, she recalls documenting their collection of handcrafted Chinese children’s hats designed to protect children from evil spirits, a craft known as Aninakis. Her extensive exposure to handcrafted textiles in the Textile Museum collection is a major influence on her work with paper today.
Ashe works in the tech industry alongside her art practice, continuing in the realm of what she describes as slow, tedious, and highly detailed work in Admin and Operations. “I think it is part of my personality. I have a loud mind, so detailed work helps suspend my thoughts. Even bookkeeping can be a meditation for me,” she says. But she also recognizes the limitations of the computer screen and we both agree that sitting behind a screen seems to limit the pleasure and satisfaction of otherwise mind balancing work. “It’s just not the same,” she said. She began to moving away from photography over the past ten years, which also involved many hours behind the screen, in favor of more tactile work with her hands.
Ultimately, she left her job too and now focusses full-time on her paper cutting. “It is every artist's dream to focus full time on their art,” she says.
Rachel Ashe’s dream is coming true. She now works out of a studio a studio at 1610 Clark Drive in Vancouver where clients visit and buy her work. “I take lots of inspiration from textile design as well as the processes of paper cutting. I work in a modular way to create larger pieces of art from multiple smaller pieces, in the same way one would create a quilt or other textile piece work. Its definitely my approach to making installations.”
The largest of Ashe’s installations, Flight Path/ Taking Flight, is approximately 15’ x 6’, a site specific piece that was suspended from the ceiling of the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, in a 2014 exhibition. Five to Six hundred paper wings were fastened together hung with wire. I try to picture the installation and can only imagine how it might have interacted with light, and cast shadows, growing the impact of the work exponentially. “Yes, shadows are a big part of my work. They give the work depth and with the 2D framed pieces, the shadow makes it clear to the viewer that what they are viewing is intricately cut paper.”
There are numerous applications for her work in the area of design which brings our conversation back to technology and the use of laser cutting. “It is true my work is time consuming and therefore has its limitations,” she says. “But people always think machines are better than humans. They are not. I am a better cutter than a machine,” she says. Then there is the programming required to teach the machine to cut Ashe’s designs. She describes the process and it sounds like she has more highly detailed work on her hands. “A laser cutter is just a tool which I may begin to use more often for speed, and to scale-up my work, but it can never replace me,” she says.
Behind her is a partially complete, eight-panel installation. Four of 16”x20” panels are done and hang on the wall. “I created all of these in December. That was a very productive month for me,” she says. The work will take another productive month to complete, but I can already see it will be a dramatic piece. “I think it is very calming to look at too,” she says. And it is true, there is something about the combination of her slow, and tactile work with paper that bring that meditative quality to life- the same quality that is central to all the work Ashe finds herself drawn to. “People usually look to the artist for either unpaid labor,” she says with an ironic smile, “and for something uplifting and positive.” With this statement Rachel Ashe speaks to the heart of what I am doing this month with the ThirtyDayGallery – looking at the often intangible value of bringing artwork home, the positive and uplifting effect Ashe refers to. I imagine those eight panels she is currently working on in a prominent hallway in my home. I love the idea of this calming energy washing over me every time I move from one room to another.
Hand-cut paper Framed, 24”x18” Price: $800
Hand-cut paper Framed, 16”x12” Price: $575 CDN
Hand-cut paper Framed, 20”x16” Price: $600 CDN