Ashley V. Blalock

Selected Exhibitions and Events

Updates / Upcoming:



- Look for a work to be included in San Diego Movers & Shakers presented by San Diego Visual Arts Network
online in 2009, and on display in 2010  

A LIVELY CONVERSATION BETWEEN WOOD AND FIBER AT MINGEI INTERNATIONAL MUSEUM

Opening on June 8, 2008, FORMS IN WOOD AND FIBER – Southern California New Work features the work of six
distinguished San Diego wood artists and California Fibers – an exemplary group of artist craftsmen from Los Angeles,
Orange and San Diego counties. Recognizing the rich diversity of excellent wood and fiber artist craftsmen in this region, the
exhibition is conceived as a lively conversation among peers and between two artistic media. Both fresh perspectives on
traditional forms and cutting-edge contemporary expressions will be included in works of superior design and craftsmanship.

California Fibers was founded in 1970 in San Diego with the purpose of providing professional advancement for
contemporary fiber artists. The creative imagination and excellent craftsmanship exhibited by the members place them in the
highest echelon of contemporary fiber artists. The group has an extensive exhibition history in the USA and abroad, and
some of its members are recipients of prestigious awards from around the world. Their creative expression includes weaving,
basketry, sculpture, surface design, wearables and mixed media. Members whose work will be included in the exhibition are:
Charlotte Bird, Ashley V. Blalock, Carrie Ann Burckle, Marilyn McKenzie Chaffee, Doshi, Jacy Diggins, Christie L. Dunning,
Gail Fraser, Polly Jacobs Giacchina, Susan Hart Henegar, Carol E. Lang, Cheryl Lommatsch, Carol Mckie Manning, Kathy
Miller, Ellen Phillips, Michael Rohde, Carol Shaw-Sutton, Valentyna Roenko Simpson, Cameron Taylor-Brown, David Weidig
and Peggy Wiedemann.

Woodworkers in the exhibition are Professor Wendy Maruyama, internationally recognized Program Head of the Woodworking
and Furniture Design Program at San Diego State University; Russ Filbeck, highly respected Associate Professor in the
Cabinet and Furniture Technology Division at Palomar College in San Marcos; Patrick Edwards, renowned practitioner and
teacher of traditional European marquetry (wood inlay); Del Cover, specialist in chair building with current work featuring
architectural elements; Brett Hesser, youngest graduate of Leeds Design Workshops who concentrates on the application of
fine wood veneers; and Dr. Gene Blickenstaff, admired for his innovative, translucent turned bowls of Norfolk Island Pine.

A lively series of artist craftsman demonstrations, lectures, studio visits and workshops for children and adults will accompany
the six-month exhibition.

Located at 1439 El Prado in Balboa Park, Mingei International Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday,10 am – 4 pm, and
closed on Mondays and national holidays. Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for students and active military
with ID. For information, call 619-239-0003 or visit www.mingei.org.

Interweave Crochet

My artwork was profiled in Interweave Crochet Magazine's Spring 2007 issue!

New American Talent
Arthouse at the Jones Center, Texas

June 17 through August 22, 2006
Will continue on tour through 2008

Other Venues:
-Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi, 2006

New American Talent is consistently one of the most open, surprising, and therefore well-respected, juried shows in the
country. (Aimee Chang, May 2006).

Austin, TX, (May 15, 2006)—Arthouse is pleased to announce New American Talent: The Twenty-First Exhibition at the
Jones Center (700 Congress Avenue) Saturday, June 17 through Sunday, August 20, 2005.  

The twenty-first in a series of annual juried exhibitions, New American Talent features the work of emerging national artists
working in a variety of media including sculpture, painting, photography and new media.  Each work on view was selected
by New American Talent  juror Aimee Chang, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport
Beach, California, and former Exhibition Coordinator and Assistant Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. This year’s
New American talent showcases the work of 59 artists from the United States—22 of whom currently live and work in Texas:

With regard to her selection process, Chang states, “This year saw a fifty percent increase in the number of submissions
for the exhibition….”  According to Chang:

Reviewing the thousands of submissions confirmed my sense of the openness prevalent in work being made by artists in
the U.S. and abroad. The works in the New American Talent exhibition range in media from the traditional—painting,
photography and drawing - to the extraordinary—serape and crochet thread, a re-vamped microwave, gasoline
containers, cast sugar, tape, and broken umbrellas.  Video art plays a prominent role and one work utilizes the Internet
and highlights the pervasiveness of satellite images of all corners of the world. The division between art and craft,
widespread in past decades, is ridiculously anachronistic in today’s wide-open art world.  (Aimee Chang, May 2006).

PUBLICATION
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with an essay by Aimee Change, selected juror for New
American Talent: The Twenty-First Exhibition.

New Beginnings

Art on display through March 17, 2006
Roger Lewis King Gallery, San Diego, CA

Featuring: Ashley Blalock, Nicole Byrne, Janelle Carter, Ame Curtiss, Jocille Flores, Daphne Hill, Amy Hyde,
Kelly Orange, Ginger Placek, Mullet Pony, Lisa Roberts, Bridget Rountree, Tiffany Blake Stone, Macoe Swett,
Athena Toner, Erika Thorpe, Maura Vazakas, Lisa Ann Wilson, Jasmine Worth.

Curated by: Ashley Blalock, Tiffany Blake Stone

Review Excerpts

Excerpt from "New American Talent: A Review of Arthouse's New American Talent 21"
by James Bae of Fluent~Collaborative

"However, aesthetic strangeness of a quieter vain can be found in the works of Lori Nelson, Adrian Esparza, and Ashley
Blalock, in various ways.... Crafted out of a small crochet, the double self-portrait effect of Blalock’s Shadow Self (2005),
with light streaming through the negative open spaces of the knitting [sic], incorporates matters of self, replication, and
insinuation of woman’s craft in one of the show’s most calmly erudite and disquieting works."

Highlights from "All hands on deck" (review of "New Beginnings")
by Robert Pincus of the San Diego Union-Tribune

“There's undeniable charm to the number of r's that the art collective “Grrrrrl Power” has added to a word that usually gets
only one. If you sound out the name of this loose collective of artists, you get a phonetically assertive version of “girl,” which
is, of course, to the point. “

“These artists feel empowered by banding together as a way to get their work before an audience with greater frequency….
The concept has worked”

“One detects implied self-portraiture in Martinez's collages and Vazakas' paintings. This is the thrust of Blalock's “Box
Self,” for which she has constructed an image of her face, in a pensive mode, with yarn and a plastic screen set within a
free-standing box.”