Artist Ashley Brossart of Orange-Peeled has been using the city—from its maps to its social interactions—to inform her artwork. One recent ongoing project involves placing small art fragments around the city for observant passers-by to find and enjoy. Participants can scan QR-codes or go to a web site to see how their small found piece of art fits into the bigger picture. She has taken the project on the road as well, all the way to San Francisco.
Like the city, Brossart doesn’t just stand around. She shared with Broken Sidewalk one of her new projects involving photo montages of Louisville combining several disparate scenes into a new imagined reality. “This idea stems out of my interest in urban renewal as well as the reuse, and recycling of what our urban landscape currently provides,” Brossart said. “Ideas of the past–tearing down and clearing out to build large-sized ‘big box’ spaces is fading out and a return to intelligent design is becoming a necessity.”
A statement about the series from Ashley Brossart:
These images are used as a catalyst for my on going series of paintings – “blueprints” – where key elements of the urban language are allowed to evolve far past the original structures. The ongoing series of paintings are based on ideas about rebuilding and renewing. This idea stems out of my interest in urban renewal as well as the reuse, and recycling of what our urban landscape currently provides. Ideas of the past – tearing down and clearing out to build large-sized ‘big box’ spaces is fading out and a return to intelligent design is becoming a necessity.
Each montage is created out of a select set of my photos of urban spaces in Louisville. I layer the original photos digitally and arrange them in a way that allows the themes and patterns that are presently found in the urban DNA of Louisville to be emphasized and rearranged to create a new space. Currently, I am choosing to focus on specific areas of urban Louisville that are renewing rapidly and attempting to juxtapose them with areas that receive less attention but potential of the area deserves a second look.
The series is not intended to be a specific plan but a sort of rearrangement and experiment in thinking about what could happen if we build and plan more carefully in the future. I want to keep viewers on their toes about awareness of urban spaces and in particular, cities – hopefully stirring consciousness about the importance of surroundings to the development of community, sustainability and progress into the future.
Brossart currently has paintings on display at the Greenhaus at 2227 South Preston Street.
