Ashley Lahti
Artist Statement
As a child, the vivid colors and intricate lines of my grandmother’s garden always fascinated me. In my current pieces, I am making use of the images I have take from her garden to explore the notion of memory. I will then take these images into Photoshop and create digital collages to tell my story. The digital collages will then make up the blue print for my work. This blueprint involves dividing the canvas into strips in which I paint flowers with varying levels of clarity and vibrancy. The opaque sections represent distant memories, while the bright areas convey more recent memories. Some parts of the canvas are blocked out altogether, suggesting memories I can no longer recall.
Memory is defined as the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms. This ideation of memory is significant in my work. A memory represents who I was and who I have become. What I have learned and obtained while also pointing out what has been lost and forgotten. Some of my memories are fresh and vivid, as if they happened just yesterday. Then there are memories that are foggy and harder to recall, while some are all but forgotten. As we get older the memories we remember and forget shift with us, as we are constantly changing. Using the reference of my grandmother’s flowers also connects my memories with her and how these memories have changed over time.
I am interested in the form of the body and the visual language of the human body. Even though we see it everyday grasping its information is like learning a new language, challenging. I find it absolutely amazing how complex our body is and that obtaining the knowledge of it requires studying the many layers involved. The body is more then just the skin we see. It is a complex architecture comprised of understanding the skeletal and muscular structures. Once one discovers these building blocks the very nature for which you see the body changes as one start to realize the very forms one should be seeing along with the lines that once failed to exist. It is this knowledge that I have obtained and continue to grow upon that has me fixated upon continuing to learn more about the forms associated with the body and the various lines and value which I can use in my own pieces.
The body and my flower pieces seem unrelated, but it’s the processes behind them that create a bond. Like the body the flower is organic. This is where the contour lines that have been engraved into the idea of creating the body can also give shape into the flower. In the end these lines may not be seen but they can be the building ground of understanding the form and line of each organic shape. The pieces also bond through
