01-Agyness1
©2009 Craig Ashby
Mixed media on masonite.
7″ x 7″

This series began as an idea back in 2008. Around the same time I was reading Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson and it really affected me. There is this one exercise in particular on manifesting a quarter. You are supposed to find a quarter on the ground and you can’t stop until you find that quarter. Not a penny or a nickel or a dime but a quarter.

At the time, money was extremely tight and it was essential to create these pieces with nearly nothing. So I worked at that Robert Anton Wilson exercise until one day I walked directly out of my building and sitting right next to the scaffolding was the masonite for all of these pieces. Filthy and covered in plaster but still workable. I immediately lugged it all upstairs. And that set the tone for the whole series. The majority of materials are scavenged or manifested, bit by bit.

When it was time to work on the imagery, I started referencing an earlier series of supermodels I had done nearly 20 years prior (which I will eventually post here). I had been working Fashion Week and Agyness Deyn was everywhere. It all happened organically and I just started creating without overthinking it.

On this first piece the gel medium I used was so dry. I would add water and still couldn’t bring it back to life. The Elmer’s glue texture which is really evident in the empty space in her cheek was caused by that dryness.

Flaws and all, it’s still one of my favorites. The color scheme works. The image works. And even the dry gel medium has a wheat paper paste quality that is very much the layered “Post No Bills” New York aesthetic that I am still trying to perfect.