Ash­ley Sloan
www​.ash​leysloan​.net
Port­land, Oregon.

Ash­ley Sloan was born in Albany, OR. She received her BFA at the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon, and now lives and works in Port­land. Ash­ley has been wast­ing no time get­ting her art into some of the hottest gal­leries in the city, and get­ting her hands dirty with a wide vari­ety of cre­ative projects in the area. It doesn’t hurt that she’s cute as a but­ton and excep­tion­ally charm­ing to boot.

Curbs and Stoops:  You were born in Albany, OR. Have you always wanted to be an artist? When you were young were you a cre­ative child? What did you drawn inspi­ra­tion from in cen­tral Oregon?

Ash­ley Sloan:  I always knew that I was good at and loved to make art, but I can’t say I always knew I wanted to be an artist. That didn’t come until I was a bit older, maybe even until I was 18 or so. But I def­i­nitely have always been cre­ative and have always loved mak­ing art. In third grade my mom got me a water­color set and it really took off from there. I would also do art projects for any school project, regard­less of topic. In 5^th grade I did a sci­ence report on fire ants and my mom and I sculpted a bunch of huge ants as my pre­sen­ta­tion. Another time I sculpted the head of Gandhi for a his­tory project. I was always cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for myself to make art.

Inter­est­ingly enough, I didn’t think grow­ing up in Albany was rel­e­vant to my work. But the more I think about it, it is a huge part of my inspi­ra­tion. As an adult I look back on it as a small, bor­ing town, but it was sur­pris­ingly inspir­ing as a child. It was safe enough for my par­ents to let me run around with­out super­vi­sion at any­time of the day. I lived next to a for­est where I had tree forts and would sleep out­side dur­ing the sum­mer. It was a big sur­prise for me to move to a city where I didn’t know every­one and had to actu­ally lock my doors. I had what would be con­sid­ered the per­fect, quin­tes­sen­tial Amer­i­can child­hood. Com­ing from that back­ground of secu­rity and hap­pi­ness is what cre­ates my strong sense of nos­tal­gia today and what made such a forced tran­si­tion in my adult life.

Curbs and Stoops:  You got an art degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon. How did your expe­ri­ence at U of O influ­ence your work? Any par­tic­u­larly inspir­ing fac­ulty members?

Ash­ley Sloan: Hon­estly, I’m not yet sure how going to the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon influ­enced my work. I have a degree in dig­i­tal art, but now that I’m out of school I barely touch my com­puter for artis­tic pur­poses. So I’m not sure what that means. I think what influ­enced me most about school was the peo­ple I went to school with and the fac­ulty mem­bers I worked with. A lot of peo­ple in my pro­gram are amaz­ing artists who have now turned into col­lab­o­ra­tors, co-​workers and good friends.

As far as pro­fes­sors go, I can eas­ily say Michael Salter had the most impact on the shap­ing of my expe­ri­ence. He’s an amaz­ingly inspir­ing and encour­ag­ing pro­fes­sor who had com­plete con­fi­dence in me. I think that’s what I needed most in school, added con­fi­dence. He was the first per­son to tell me that what I was doing was totally valid and that I should pur­sue it. Hon­est cri­tiques were also some­thing he invalu­ably added to my edu­ca­tion. I feel like a lot of art classes I took were almost too pos­i­tive, to a fault even. He was the first per­son to chal­lenge me and to give me con­struc­tive, hon­est criticism.

Curbs and Stoops:  I read through your C.V. and found a show called The Cute Insti­tute at Per­fect Atten­dance in Eugene, OR. I lived in Eugene and went to U of O and I’m not famil­iar with the venue Per­fect Atten­dance. I saw the instal­la­tion pho­tos, they are so cool! Can you tell me about this project, I’m fascinated!

Ash­ley Sloan: Per­fect Atten­dance was actu­ally a group show of all the final the­sis projects from my grad­u­at­ing class. We rented an empty store­front in down­town Eugene and pretty much got to do what­ever we wanted with the space. My the­sis project was The Cute Insti­tute where I cre­ated an imag­i­nary world where I attempted to sci­en­tif­i­cally exam­ine cute creatures/​objects. I think a lot of this project was also about rec­on­cil­ing what role fem­i­nin­ity played in my life at that time. Finally being okay with mak­ing work that was unapolo­get­i­cally fem­i­nine. That body of work is really what has led me to the place I am today in my artwork.

Curbs and Stoops:  Since grad­u­at­ing and mov­ing to Port­land you’ve shown at some of PDX’s hippest gal­leries. How did you go about get­ting your work out there?

Ash­ley Sloan: Well now I’m flat­tered. The sim­plest answer I can come up with is that I know a lot of peo­ple in the Port­land art scene. And it’s an easy tran­si­tion from being friends with artists to work­ing pro­fes­sion­ally with them. Over a year ago I started con­tribut­ing to the web­site http://​www​.open​wide​pdx​.com/, and through that I’ve met many of the gal­leries and cura­tors I’ve shown with. And hon­estly, many of the gal­leries I’ve worked with are owned by peo­ple I went to col­lege with, such as Trac­tor Gallery, Chump Change Gallery and Lump West. So I guess as cliché as it is, for me it’s all been about who I know socially and professionally.

Curbs and Stoops:  Many of the illus­tra­tions that you’ve done in 2009 deal with incom­plete fig­ures. Can you tell me about what this series means to you?

Ash­ley Sloan:  Most of the time with my art, I don’t really know what I’m work­ing through until I have about a year’s space to look back. As strange as it sounds, I often look at past work and with hind­sight can under­stand what it was really about, not nec­es­sar­ily what I thought it was about at the time. I recently read Anne of Green Gables and think this sums up a lot of what this series means to me. “That’s the worst of grow­ing up, and I’m begin­ning to real­ize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don’t seem half so won­der­ful to you when you get them.”

Curbs and Stoops:  You work a lot in graphite. What is it about the media that draws you to it? Do you have other favorite media?

Ash­ley Sloan: I’m not sure what it is about graphite that I’m so drawn to, but it’s cer­tainly my favorite medium. Sumi ink, col­ored pen­cils, acrylic paint and water­col­ors are also some of my favorites. It just depends on what kind of project I’m work­ing on. I think another part of the story is that I was embar­rassed for a long time in school to do graphite draw­ings. At the time I thought draw­ing was dead and that I should be using new and dif­fer­ent tech­niques more suit­able for the 21^st cen­tury. But now that I’m out of school and left to my own devices I’ve reclaimed this medium for myself. Graphite draw­ings were almost a secret indul­gence, but I feel most com­fort­able with a pen­cil in my hand and there’s noth­ing wrong with that. It was cer­tainly a shock to most of my peers when my “Wish” show came out. Almost all of them thought that the series came out of nowhere, but really I’d just been hid­ing that part of my work for 4 years.

Curbs and Stoops:  Port­land is awash in artis­tic tal­ent. Who are some of your favorite local artists, and where do you like to go to see art?

Ash­ley Sloan: Agreed. There are so many amaz­ing artists work­ing in Port­land right now and it’s really almost impos­si­ble to choose my favorites. Some peo­ple that come to mind presently are MK Guth, Storm Tharp, Joe Thurston, Holly Andres, Damien Gilley and Mia Nolt­ing. As for favorite gal­leries I’d have to say Appen­dix, PDX Con­tem­po­rary, Trac­tor, Half Dozen, Fontanelle, New Amer­i­can Art Union, gallery­HOME­LAND, Rocks­box and Fourteen30. I would also like to men­tion two gal­leries that aren’t in Port­land but are, in my opin­ion, some of the best gal­leries in the North­west. Seattle’s West­ern Bridge and Eugene’s Ditch Projects are really amaz­ing spaces I try to visit a cou­ple times a year.

Curbs and Stoops:  Ugh, yes Ditch Projects! I’m from Eugene, and worked in a gallery there for three years. Ditch Projects was the space I always wanted to cre­ate and that I always believed the Eugene/​Springfield com­mu­nity deserved. Kudos to Ditch Projects!! (Really click their link!) Your artists state­ment explains that your art “por­trays the moment when one invol­un­tar­ily shakes off the shroud of sta­bil­ity and care­less­ness, to a reveal an adult life of hope, dis­ap­point­ment, and real­is­tic world­view.” We’re less than a month apart in age. I felt like your state­ment pretty elo­quently summed up the feel­ing of being in your mid-​20s. How do you har­ness the tremen­dous energy of change and evo­lu­tion that char­ac­ter­izes this phase of our life into mature artis­tic output?

Ash­ley Sloan:  I think I ended up where I’m at right now unwit­tingly. Com­ing from post-​college empti­ness, I unin­ten­tion­ally tapped into this huge source of inspi­ra­tion. No one told me what it was like after col­lege and that almost every­one faces a sort of abyss where child­hood and adult­hood clash in your mid 20’s. But through my work I’ve started to iden­tify these emo­tions in myself as well as in oth­ers. I try to make work that other peo­ple can relate to while also telling my own story. And I think with that in mind is where the mature artis­tic out­put comes from for me.

Curbs and Stoops:  Do you feel like your recent artis­tic expe­ri­ences have allowed you to grow out of the dogpaddle-​sh feel­ing of the mid20s or wal­low in it?

Ash­ley Sloan:  I think iden­ti­fy­ing the prob­lem is half the bat­tle, so for me mak­ing this work is def­i­nitely a grow­ing process. Iden­ti­fy­ing where I’m com­ing from, embrac­ing that feel­ing, but also see­ing what’s wrong with it has been a huge part of my life and art. And that’s where I try to instill my work with a cer­tain amount of hope­ful­ness. It’s okay to be nos­tal­gic for the past but you have to be an adult at some point and that hard tran­si­tion also hope­fully includes a cer­tain amount of optimism.

Curbs and Stoops:  Much of your recent work focuses on the sort of accou­trements of fem­i­nin­ity — dresses, pony­tails… Are you a girly girl? Or is the iso­la­tion of these ele­ments within the com­po­si­tions a sort of rejec­tion of their importance?

Ash­ley Sloan:  Not sur­pris­ingly, you’d be hard-​pressed to find a girlier girl than myself. In return, my work fully embraces all things girly. I love frilly dresses, bows, heels, and tulle, but that cer­tainly wasn’t always the case. For years I rejected all tra­di­tional fem­i­nin­ity. To me , being a fem­i­nist meant that I had to reject every­thing asso­ci­ated with girli­ness. But the last year of col­lege I worked at the university’s Women Cen­ter and real­ized that embrac­ing being a woman didn’t have to mean giv­ing up girly things. I think that the work I’ve cre­ated since that time has been a per­sonal evo­lu­tion of accept­ing the valid­ity of fem­i­nin­ity. So as much as my work is about becom­ing an adult and putting away child­ish parts of myself, I simul­ta­ne­ously embrace aes­thet­ics asso­ci­ated with young girls.

Curbs and Stoops:  What are your artis­tic goals for the com­ing years?

Ash­ley Sloan:  I think to just keep mak­ing art is my main goal for the future. New year’s Res­o­lu­tion: I want to make art my main pri­or­ity. It’s easy for me to get dis­tracted with every­day busy­ness; it takes a con­certed effort for me to make a new body of work. But I recently got an art stu­dio, and think that will con­tribute to me mak­ing art on a more reg­u­lar basis. Other than that, I’d love to expand beyond Port­land and have more shows around the coun­try. I’m also think­ing about get­ting an MFA in the next five years.

Curbs and Stoops:  I really love your sculp­tural and instal­la­tion work. Do you tend to work in 2D and 3D simul­ta­ne­ously or do you work in phases?

Ash­ley Sloan: I’m not sure if I have a reg­u­lar way of work­ing between 2D and 3D. With The Cute Insti­tute, I made the stuffed ani­mals before any­thing else and then cre­ated the paint­ings and instal­la­tion. But even those started out as a sketch, so I think I almost always start with a sketch whether it’s for a 2D piece or 3D piece and go from there. I haven’t been doing a lot of 3D pieces lately, but am start­ing to work on some large-​scale sculp­tures as part of an instal­la­tion I’m creating.

Curbs and Stoops:  Port­land has a huge num­ber of cre­ative types try­ing to make a go at being a pro­fes­sional work­ing artist. You seem to have done very well for your­self in the Port­land scene in a short amount of time. Do you have any advice for artists just arriv­ing in Portland?What is your best advice for how to stand out in the very large crowd of PDX artists?

Ash­ley Sloan: I think just get­ting involved in the art scene is the most impor­tant first step to stand­ing out. When I first arrived I made a list of gal­leries and peo­ple whose inter­ests some­how inter­sected mine and con­tacted them. Despite the fact that there are tons of artists in Port­land there’s also a huge amount of venues and oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able to emerg­ing artists. That’s what I love about the Port­land art scene, it’s pretty easy to imme­di­ately become involved. I also think hav­ing an art web­site is huge. With­out a web­site it’s a lot harder for peo­ple to become inter­ested in your work.

Curbs and Stoops: If you were a crayon what color would you be?

Ash­ley Sloan: Hmm…not sure about crayon color; maybe the Cot­ton Candy crayon from Cray­ola. It’s a good light-​colored, airy pink. Per­fectly sum­ming up my fem­i­nine indulgences.

Curbs and Stoops:  Favorite way to reward your­self when you com­plete a new piece?

Ash­ley Sloan:  Unfor­tu­nately for my health, I def­i­nitely reward myself with sweet things. I have a ridicu­lous sweet tooth (as can be seen in some of my past art) and can pretty much be con­vinced to do any­thing if I get a dessert as reward.