Ashley Lyon works with clay to construct objects and images that stage a charged dialogue between space, viewer, image, and form. Eschewing life-casting, she painstakingly hand-builds every component of her sculptures, pushing degrees of realism in order to move beyond conventional figuration. Through this process, Lyon gives shape to the layered, often contradictory realities of motherhood—at once breathtaking, beautiful, confusing, and grueling.
Central to her practice is the idea of “matrescence”—the birth of a mother—a term popularized by psychiatrist Alexandra Sacks. Lyon draws from this concept to explore the psychological and physical transitions of becoming a parent, a period akin to adolescence in its intensity, ambivalence, and emotional complexity. Her work points to the friction between lived experience and expectation: how the realities of motherhood so often diverge from internal ideals and from the narratives enforced by social and cultural norms.
Lyon (b. 1983, Palm Springs, CA) lives and works in Newburgh, NY. She received her BFA in Ceramics from the University of Washington and her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has participated in residencies at the Archie Bray Foundation, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the European Ceramic Work Centre, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2011, 2014). Her work has been exhibited at institutions including the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Hunter College, New York, NY; SUNY Cortland, Cortland, NY; The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH; the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Alfred, NY; and Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, NY. Lyon is currently Assistant Professor of Ceramics at New Jersey City University.