ART FWD Benefit Auction and Celebration
129 - Ashleigh Sumner
Silent Auction
Closed
$1,500
Current Bid: $800
MOVE TO ZERO, 2023
Repurposed Nike shoe boxes, shredded photographs, spray paint on wood panel
24 x 24 inches
Courtesy Themes and Projects / Minnesota Street, San Francisco
Sumner’s early artistic career was firmly rooted in theater arts with professional credits in stage, independent queer film, and network television. Her years of experience as a performer allowed for a natural evolution toward translating elements of text into visual media. Sumner’s inclination toward the spoken word serves as a cornerstone to her practice. She has sought to interweave quotes, poems, lyrics, and various passages from literature in her work. These selected fragments of text within a painting are often intended to make subtle, and not so subtle, political statements, involving class, gender and equality. In Move to Zero, Sumner repurposes Nike packaging and other found materials to create an image that simultaneously evokes the kinetic activity associated with athletic apparel and the need to shift to a no-waste economy for the sake of environmental stability.
Exhibitions and Collections: Sumner is represented by Themes + Projects at Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA, where she will have a solo exhibition in 2024. Curated exhibitions featuring her work include Street Preachers at the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA, with awarded grants from the Los Angeles Arts Commission and the Pasadena Art Alliance. Public art collaborations include projects with 2K Foundations and NBA star, Damian Lillard. Ashleigh Sumner’s work may be found in public and private collections in the United States and abroad.
Awards and Credentials: Sumner was the juried panel winner of the Red Bull Curates Competition for Los Angeles, CA, and she received a special exhibition with SCOPE, Miami Beach, FL. She received a BFA from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC.
Sumner’s work, American Idiot, received an honorable mention in the MarinMOCA exhibition Justice, curated by Karen Jenkins-Johnson, November 14 – December 24, 2020.
@ash_sumner
