Artist Statement:
Ash Stone uses pasteurized prepared cheese product as a medium to explore preservation. “Say cheese!” invokes a smile demanded by the camera, a command that folds performance into memory. Here, the body is subtly conditioned towards palatability. This fascination with word play and medium is where Stone examines and obscures expectations of the idyllic. By pasting imagery sourced from her family’s archive onto American cheese, Stone asks: What lies beneath the picturesque? What conditions create our histories?
At the center of this experimental work, is a celebration of Stone’s late grandmothers, Esperanza and Mary. Each slice of cheese serves as a personal altar, composed with artifacts drawn from a life once lived. Stained recipe books and duct-taped photo albums among the items holding their essence. For Stone, these works have become “Signs of Hope” that carry symbols of their joy, dreams, knowledge, carework, and resilience.
In the wake of loss, studying heritage becomes both comfort and confrontation. The tenderness of lineage exists alongside its harm. Through the lives of her grandmothers, Stone reflects on working-class cultural landscapes in the rural Texas plains. Within the home, patriarchal violence structured everyday life. A critical examination of the normative, directly facing emotional wounds and systemic injustices across generations, catalyzes the need for Ash to imagine new ways of being.
In the pursuit of forging her personhood around learning and unlearning, Stone turns to drag for embodiment, joy, and the opportunities for world building. Through a site specific self portrait that reclaims religious iconography, “St. Velveeta,” a patron saint of preservation, embodies feminine self protection.
Her practice is informed by the labor and thinking of intersectional feminists, psychologists, scientists, teachers, grocery store employees, and housekeepers.
Artist Bio:
Ash Stone (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and educator based in Portland, Oregon. Her work, rooted in play and humor, serves as both a reclamation of agency and a healing ritual while exploring themes of domestic dysfunction. Ash uses photography, installation, experimental short film, and her drag persona, Velveeta Fondue, as tools to examine cultural identity and the myth of the “American Dream”. As a biracial Tejano, Stone draws inspiration from generational knowledge, the grief process, and an archive of family photos. Her practice is informed by the labor and thinking of intersectional feminists, psychologists, scientists, teachers, grocery store employees, and housekeepers. Ash is currently a co-director with time-based artist alliance, Outer Voice, and educator with Portland Community College. She holds an MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and a BFA from the University of North Texas.
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