Ash Luce
he/they
Edinboro, PA, USA
Ash Luce is a mixed media artist based in Edinboro, Pennsylvania where they received their BFA in Sculpture and Metalsmithing from PennWest Edinboro University in 2024. They enjoy playing with the macabre in their work, along with narratives relating to healing, spirituality, and creation.
“‘Reliquary to My Inner Child’ was made to help me deal with the difficult thoughts and feelings I have surrounding my dead name and my chosen name. Everyone in Edinboro knows me as Ash but everyone back in my hometown, including family, still refer to me by my dead name. This separation of identity began a fracturing within me where I felt like two completely different people. To help me cope with these mixed emotions, I decided to assign my dead name to my inner child in this work, owning it as a part of who I was.”
How does your work relate to the theme connection?
“I made this piece in order to deal with and heal from a disconnection I had within myself stemming from having to mask my queer identity. I made a reliquary to hold the eye of me as a child on the inside and have my eye as an adult guarding it on the outside. I used lace with pure white and bright pink in a floral pattern around my baby eye to symbolize me being a little girl and traditional femininity. I then used an off white lace in a more jagged and harsh shape around my adult eye that was also torn and ragged to show how I’ve been through a lot over the years and changed in many ways including gender identity where I no longer identify as strictly feminine. I made this piece to help myself not think so negatively about my dead name but to rather see it as something that needs to be protected in a safe place."
NYCJW24 @ UrbanGlass, Simon Leung
"Reliquary to my inner child", Copper, lace, photos, found objects, 3" x 3" x 0.75", 2023What role does connection play in your creative process?
“Many of my pieces are made with the intention to look at past experiences or traumas in order to help me process. My work starts the healing process so I can then better reconnect with myself and connect with those around me, as I often let those experiences run my life and cause disassociation from everyone and everything in my life. I feel that in order to better understand people, I need to better understand myself and that’s something that I try to do in my work. On the broadest spectrum, my work revolves around connection and relationships, how I connect with myself, how people connect with each other, how I connect to people."
What connection(s) does your queerness make to the world around you?
"My Being queer and having relationships with other queer people has allowed me to relate to others on a much deeper level – to be able to unmask and be the authentic self that I often feel I have to hide around others, especially in public and around some family. Growing up, I was often told to conceal the weirder parts of me or the pieces of me that didn’t quite fit in with everyone else, that I had to conform to those around me. Coming to terms with my queerness, after doing a lot of self reflection, and meeting other people with similar experiences has helped me to open up and be myself and to then be able to connect with others and help them do the same."
NYCJW24 @ UrbanGlass, Francely Flores