Featured Artist: Ashley Zelinskie

Ashley Zelinskie is a glass artist at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is highly conceptual and based on material and display. Much of her work could be described as installation as the viewer's experience is the goal of the art. Ashley was born in Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania and grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. While in high school she discover her love for art. While seeking out new materials to work with she discovered glass. After falling in love with the material and learning the technical skills to manage it the urge grew to become more experimental. She attend RISD in order to learn conceptual fine art from artists that worked in glass. She can now be found in Brooklyn creating works with glass paired with video, installation, and performance. Much of her work is based in the interest of glassblowing and glassmaking as a process and in her future work she hopes to be able to share her love for creation with her audience.

"When I start my work I start with material. I look to the material to inspire the work. The material that inspires me most I find is glass. I am interested in glass because is possesses contradicting qualities. It can be both transparent or opaque, liquid or solid, hot or cold. I let these unique qualities along with the process of creating glass create the final piece. I try to push glass in directions that have not fully been explored. Pairing glass with video, installation, and performance is a path few artists travel. When working with a material commonly used for display purposes the artist must involve the viewer in a way that provokes a different mindset about what they are actually viewing. The transparency of glass allows for multiple viewing fields within one object.

I am interested in the role of the audience in the art. They are the deciding factor in the success of a piece and should be involved in its creation. A lot of my work invites the viewer to be a part of the piece and some works involve the viewer without invitation. This brings the question of the role of the viewer, the artist, and the art. I find these relationships interesting and find even more interesting the swap of roles to create different relationships. I use context and situation as my tool for working with this material of audience.


When combine these materials of glass and audience create an intriguing dynamic. I believe that when a successful piece requires a deep understanding of both and that is what I strive for as an artist."
-Ashley Zelinskie

See Ashley's work at http://ashleyzelinskie.com/