ADULT GROCERIES 

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Clay Ash is a nomad turned seed harvesting, many media maker, exploring the procession of time in Denver CO. Currently capturing moments in film, thread & ink.     insta: @ClayCourtneyAsh ︎

artist feature 002:




Clay Ash, she/they

 
Tiffany, 2021, Dubblefilm Jelly (Images 1, 2 & 3)

Amanda, 2021, Portra 400 film (Image 4)

Bridget, 2023, Portra800 film (Images 5, 6 & 7)

Hannah, 2024, Flic film Aurora 800 (Images 8, 9 & 10)






AG: how would you describe this body of work? does it build off of other work you've done? 



Clay Ash: I have, I would say, two divergent photography styles. One is absolute lack of organization, I want messy accident, film damaged by its environment- and this 'film as experience' heavily influences my more erotic/intimate photography shoots, along with nearly two decades of nude paintings. In this long standing painting series, I use plants and shapes on the body to communicate emotions. I see the erotic/intimate photography as a more relational off-shoot of this style. These sets are the model's bodies, plants and symbols that they have invited me to witness and play with, relate to.






AG: could you tell us a bit about your process, and how it influenced the pieces?



Clay Ash: When I started out with this style of shoots, it was just a way to play with friends. It had all of the elements of creativity and intimacy and vulnerability that I was so uncertain how to bring into my relationships without an activity or a device. More recently they begin with a consultation of sorts where we think of places that are special to the model, scenes they want to play out, symbols that are important to them. And then it's an enacting of a ritual, the scene we've imagined. Not terribly different from negotiating a kink scene, only in the end we have something we can look at and keep.






AG: what themes did you play with for this series and how did you personally come to relate to those themes?



Clay Ash: I began shooting heavily stylized/ fantasy portraits of women when I was 14. Growing up in South Dakota I was lonely for queers and community and a kind of beauty that I couldn't find but I could make. Art has always been more of a 'ritual of the making' relationship, and this is very true for my photography. My love of it is in the experience of making it, and the result is a happy accident. The themes I explore in these sets are rewilding, intimacy, recklessness, fear and death. The process of making a photograph with someone inherently contains intimacy, fear, some rewilding, hopefully recklessness. Death is in almost all of my photography, from abandoned buildings, to dead fields, animals. I've always been fascinated with death (hasn't everyone?) and I think pursuing it as a subject of my art possibly stems from me trying to become friends with something that has affected my life so deeply.