Ash Hay

My art is diaristic and centered in the body; how it communicates with the earth, itself, and bodies around it.

In my work, I explore ideas of gender expression, body acceptance, and radical softness. Fatness, my own and others’, comes up often as I am continually confronted with how fat bodies are treated and how they navigate this world.

My use of large soft sculpture, techniques of paper layering in my paintings and works on paper, and a color palette rooted in the color pink, all support my overarching theme of softness as power. I am influenced heavily by the works of Loise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith as well as the lineage of fiber artists and crafters in my own family.