Ashley Bell, fine arts and business management senior, with a concentration in ceramics, likes to confront people with her artwork and said she someday hopes to run her own gallery and studio store combination.
Bell’s interest in ceramics started young. Her father worked as a mechanical engineer but as a hobby, he had a pottery wheel and kiln in their garage. Bell said she used to just sit and watch her father throw clay on the wheel and make all sorts of useful things.
Her father’s work was mainly functional pieces that they could use around the house. Bell said when she was about 10 years old she made her first piece of pottery. It was a brown pinch pot with a flower stamp on the bottom and she said it was the ugliest pot she had ever seen.
Regardless of how her first pinch pot turned out, Bell said she has not stopped creating pieces since.
“I do not create anything functional or traditional anymore. I focus on issues and I create molds of things to represent whatever controversial issue I want to say something about at the time,” she said. “When I choose my issue I like to think about things people are uncomfortable talking about.”
A big influence in Bell’s artwork has been the new assistant professor of fine arts, Brian Harper.
“He has really brought contemporary art to our classes and helped me think outside the box,” Bell said. “If he hadn’t come to IUS, I would probably still be doing utilitarian pieces.”
Bell chose war for her issue last semester, which turned out to be a huge undertaking that Harper is still talking about today.
“Some of the things that set Ashley apart as an artist are her work ethic and ability to stay focused on a large project,” Harper said.
“For example, last semester she used over a thousand ceramic babies to represent the way we psychologically handle death in war, using the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as starting points. She showed that she can pursue not only her technical skills in ceramics but also her conceptual abilities as well,” Harper said.
This semester Bell is working with guns. She said she likes to have some sort of story or emotion behind her work so that it is meaningful to her and her audience.
“Ashley has a solid understanding of the need to incorporate both the technical and conceptual in her artwork — this skill is not easily learned and it will help her in the future as she pursues her career,” Harper said.
With the encouragement and support from Harper and her parents, Bell is very determined to connect to her audience and keep improving her technique.
Bell said her parents have had a huge role in not only sharing their creativity and entrepreneurship but also in supporting her no matter what she has chosen to pursue or create with her art.
Bell’s mother is an entrepreneur who runs her own cleaning business that Bell works for when she is not at school. She said her mother has had a variety of her own businesses throughout her life.
Bell said after graduation she eventually wants to have a studio, art gallery and store to sell her work that she will own and run on her own.
Bell admitted having two majors and wanting to go into business for herself as an artist is a very high ambition, but she blamed that on her parents for showing her anything is possible.
So far, Bell said she has been able to keep all her work so that one day she can display it in her gallery, but that all depends on the size of her pieces. The piece on war that she created last year is sitting at home in her closet in six plastic tubs. She said she knows if her pieces keep getting bigger then it may not be feasible to keep everything.
“I don’t look too far in to the future,” she said, “I like to go day by day and take one thing at a time.”
By SARAH LEE
Staff Writer
sbl327@ius.edu