Ash Dahlke (MFA ’19, Painting) recently completed two major projects, a site-specific sculpture at The Land With No Name and a bi-national collaborative mural in Agua Prieta, Sonora.
Dahlke is an artist-in-residence at The Land with No Name, where her work, “Making-do,” debuted Nov. 6.
The sculpture, created in Tucson, “mimics a stacked mass of objects typically seen precariously stacked at secondhand stores,” Dahlke said. “The woven elements mimic layers of sedimentary rock representing the emotional and psychological weight of each of the objects we own. Over time, I will go out to the land and visually mend the fibers as they begin to break down. This will serve to open up a dialogue on the impact of our own waste in local ecology, and although we are temporal beings, the things we leave behind.
The objects used in the sculpture were natural debris, rope, steel, spray paint, reflective tape, string, and found fabrics.
>> Ash Dahlke website | School of Art
>> Making-do images by Anna Brody (MFA ’21, photography)
Dahlke, who teaches 2D Art at Cochise College, also volunteers with Border Arts Corridor, a local art nonprofit in Douglas. This summer the group completed a bi-national collaborative mural with Borderlands Restoration Network where Dahlke and Stephany Zamarripa were the two lead artists.
Both Dahlke and Zamarripa painted images of the local flora of the Douglas/Agua Prieta region and in collaboration with Borderland Restoration Networks summer field school, they wanted to, “create a mural that showed the beauty of the borderlands and the connections between these spaces that are divided by the international boundary,” Dahlke said.
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