About Rachael Ashe
Artist Statement:
Rachael Ashe creates hand-cut paper artwork and installations focused on pattern mixing, and influenced by the design of textiles. She is attracted to techniques involving repetitive action as a form of meditation and devotional labour.
Her paper-cut works incorporate a variety of designs, from highly structured, to organic shapes, to asymmetrical compositions, all flowing and contained within a larger form. Developing the work with an intuitive and spontaneous design approach, Rachael works in a single coloured paper and reduces the patterns to negative/positive space. It’s an additive/subtractive process of drawing the patterns in pencil on paper, and then removing bits of the composition through cutting to reveal the patterns as intricate lines and shapes.
For Rachael, working with patterns has been a fascinating means of exploring history, the effects of colonialism, the intersections and influence between different cultures, the rich symbolism and meaning in patterns, and so much more. She enjoys the challenge of bringing different patterns together in a single piece of work, to observe how they interact, connect, and harmonize with one another.
Biography:
Rachael Ashe is a graduate of the Creative Photography program at Humber College, and is a multidisciplinary artist self-taught in paper-cutting and sculpting. She creates hand-cut artwork and installations from paper. Her work is an intersection of the disciplines of art, craft and design. Rachael credits her former position as a photographer at the Textile Museum of Canada, and an extensive exposure to handcrafted textiles, as a major influence on her work with paper to this day.
Rachael has taught workshops for 10 + years on altered books, paper-cutting, and sculpting. She organizes talks and events, and has curated multiple exhibitions with a focus on fine craft, and paper art. Rachael leads an on-going monthly event, Art & Craft Social, at various locations around Vancouver, to bring people together for social making.
She has exhibited across Canada, the US, and the UK, as well as been published in Uppercase Magazine, and the books Design Genius, Paper Play, and Rag & Pulp. Rachael lives and works in beautiful Vancouver BC, the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.