Artist Interview

Artist: Ashely Anderson

Exhibition: Illustration

Media: Watercolors

Gallery: CSULB School of Art, Merlino

Instagram: N/A

Website: N/A

The person or I should say Artist that I interviewed for this essay was Ashely Anderson who was just one of the artists who contributed to the illustration exhibit as the gallery was a group exhibition and she happened to be there the day that I went for the interview. Ashely Anderson is from Santa Monica and transferred from a community college called “ Santa Monica Community College” where she got her AA degree in Liberal Arts. She is an undergraduate student here at Cal State Long Beach that is majoring in Illustration and is trying to focus on working with illustration pieces while she is finishing up at the school of art.  This is Ashely’s fourth year of schooling as she has completed two in Santa Monica and is finishing her last semester while she trying to coop with the fact that her art career for her school will soon be over but she has her mindset on graduating from Cal State Long Beach with a BFA in the School of Art Studio Illustration program.

The piece that Ashely presented to me in the gallery was her very own and the way it came off on me was weird, unique, and very colorful as it had a lot of colors in it and around the object that was on the painting. The painting had a lot of interesting characters in it as it had a group of frogs who looked really funny as it was not the way they were drawn but the way the painter had them arrange in the painting. The characters of the painting came in big and small sizes as it depicts four frogs who are in a circle and have their hands in the middle of the circle doing something with them that is not shown in the painting itself. The other object that caught my attention was the background as I did not know if they were like human frogs who are frogs but are doing human things or if they are regular frogs, since knowing what type it is would help me understand the background better like is it a city background or a pond background at night. Another thing I want to mention about the painting is if the frogs are family or if they know each other since they are all in a group circle together also one more thing that I forgot to mention was the little green dots that the frogs had on the back of them I thought that was pretty interesting.

What the painting about is unclear as it does not have a clear message as to what it is as it just shows some frogs in a circle with their arms in the middle of that circle with a nice blue lighting in the background. The author, on the other hand, had a meaning for her entire exhibition as it was a show about her past as what she had seen and experienced growing up in her town with a little bit of a twist to it as you can see for yourself. Ashely wanted to tell a folktale about her life or most importantly her childhood as she believes these stories tell us who she is and what she went through growing up as a child as it shows her true identity of who she is. Ashely also says that the painting in a way brings a metaphor to the table as she believes that folktales have a metaphor for them so she tried to bring that fact into her painting as we can kind of see from the frogs. Overall the paintings are the story of her life as she wants to give us an incite on how she lived, what she believed in, and what she had to go through as a child growing up and I can see it here in her paintings especially her frog one as maybe the frogs were her go-to when life felt hard.

In my opinion, I loved this gallery it was one of the best ones I have been through as it comes off as welcoming and then just blows your mind away with all the weird and interesting things you have to encounter in the gallery. I really enjoyed the part of her gallery when you really had to make out what it was as it looked to be many things but you knew in your head that it was one thing and you just had to look carefully to find it. The messages I got off from her paintings were good messages or they did not bother me at all as most of the messages were about Ashely’s life and what she went through growing up, which we did not know until I had interviewed her after viewing all the paintings. The main thing that I liked about this gallery was the fun she was having with it as she had the fifties-era or like an old school theme that we do not see as much in today’s world as it is all about the future and modern art. Overall this gallery was fun to be in and to look at plus Ashely was fun to interview as well as she did not hold back while I was interviewing her as she gave me a rundown of all her painting and what they meant.