About Rachael Ashe

Artist Statement:
Rachael Ashe creates hand-cut artwork and installations from paper inspired by visual patterns found in nature, and influenced by textile design and production. She is attracted to techniques that involve repetitive action as a form of meditation and devotional labour. She is curious to see how far a simple piece of paper can be sculpted and reformed as most of the surface is removed. Organic forms and geometric shapes are carved through an iterative and spontaneous method of freehand paper-cutting, moving in a rhythmic manner to allow the movement of her knife to flow intuitively.

Rachael is fascinated with repetition and explores this through the methods of hands-on making she is drawn to and the type of work she produces. Repetitive action is essential in developing a skill, building a muscle, creating a pattern, or strengthening focus and discipline. Reiterations of movement, of shape, of process, of the same daily actions and motions made as we move through our lives. Life is made up of modest and quiet acts and events rather than a constant stream of excitement and novelty. Small marks, tiny actions that are part of a larger whole. The bigger piece, the grander picture of a life, does not exist without the small iterations that make up existence.

Biography
Rachael Ashe is a graduate of the Creative Photography program at Humber Collage, and is a multidisciplinary artist self-taught in papercraft. Rachael credits her former position as a photographer at the Textile Museum of Canada, and through it an extensive exposure to handcrafted textiles, as a major influence on her work with paper to this day. In December 2013, Rachael was the featured monthly speaker at Creative Mornings in Vancouver, and she spoke on the topic of making by hand to a two-hundred-person audience. In 2017 she was the CCBC nominee for the Mayor’s Arts Award in the category of Craft and Design. She has exhibited across Canada, the US, and the UK, as well as been published in Uppercase Magazine, Design Genius, and Paper Play. Rachael lives and works in beautiful Vancouver, Canada.