Artist Statement:
I make finely crafted still lifes that reenact the ordinary — consumer goods, cardboard boxes, junk food, a PlayStation controller, rendered in porcelain. My work speaks to the fleeting nature of desire, consumption, and the ambivalent pleasures of capitalism. My objects operate as tableaux and catalogs: witnesses to celebrations already past. The narrative itself reveals fears, joy, insecurities, and the small rituals that stitch ordinary life together. I often use humor as a tool to approach weightier themes so the work can be both affectionate and critical. I am interested in the tension between admiration and permanence: the act of choosing, consuming, and appreciating a moment that is fleeting but here made permanent in ceramic and glaze. My creative process requires careful considerations, printing saturated commercial colors juxtaposed against pale glaze washes. By recreating familiar objects with care and slight distortion, I invite viewers to recognize their own complicity, nostalgia, and longing, and to consider how value is assigned, lived, and remembered.
Artist Biography:
Byron Ashley is a Ceramist from Topeka, KS. He graduated from Kansas State University with a B.F.A. in studio art in 2019. In 2025, Byron completed his M.F.A. in studio art from Texas Tech University. His work features ceramic objects of discarded products and screen printed labeling. Recently Byron completed an artist residency with Chautauqua Institute, a short term residency with Red Lodge Clay Center, and a residency with Taos Ceramics Center. Currently he teaches ceramics at Santa Fe Community College. His work has been recently featured in the exhibitions CraftTexas 2025, Going the Distance: Regional Excellence in Ceramics and What Holds – Ceramic Boxes and the Language of Containment