'Ordinary Hours' by Ashley Andersen

About the Exhibit:
Ordinary Hours is an exhibition highlighting how our daily rituals and mundane moments are entwined with holiness. The term ordinary hours is one that refers to the amount of hours someone is expected to work within a typical work week, and the Liturgy of the Hours is a practice where prayer is held throughout a day with Morning Prayer (Lauds), Daytime Prayer (anytime between mid-morning and mid-afternoon), Evening Prayer (Vespers), Night Prayer (Compline) and the Office of Readings (the longest hour where lengthier readings occur). Several of the pieces in this show either were progressively made during one of these specific hours or attempt to capture the documentation of time in a way that merges ordinary/domestic materials and objects with materials/compositions that elevate their importance and carry elements of reverence or holiness with them. The paintings were made by activating the chemical reactions between the metals found within Dutch gold-leaf and the products used to clean and care for our homes. The drawings engrave commonplace scenes from around the home into wood, gold-leaf, or metal. While the sculptures deal with obscuring an object by placing ordinary components of things that we live with behind a frosted panel. These vitrine-like compositions offer up an intimate space where we can navigate the mystery that things we are familiar with might not be things that we understand.

About the Artist:

Ashley Andersen received her BA in Visual and Performing Arts with honors from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. She has been awarded several fellowships and awards, including being named one of the top 100 Contemporary Artists in 2021 by Aesthetica Magazine. Recent and upcoming exhibitions that she is showing in are at Auric Gallery, SURFACE, WIRWIR in Berlin, CICA Contemporary Art Museum in Korea, York Gallery in the UK, East Window and Redline Contemporary in Denver, Gallery of Contemporary Art in Colorado Springs, and The Museum of Art in Fort Collins. She has also been a part of several publications which include the Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology, Studio Image Project, and Shame Radiant with East Window. Residencies that she has been a part of include Picture Berlin, Ox-Bo, New York City Crit Club, and NAIR. Currently, she is based in Colorado.