CORNER STORE COLUMN

MESSY NIGHTSTAND/ WILD MEADOW

A FLOODZONE SPOTLIGHT

An Interview with Ash Fritzsche

by SARA MAE HENKE

As part of Everyday Future Fest, Da Vinci Art Alliance proudly announces Flood Zone: A Sustainable Art Silent Auction.

Make your way to higher ground with this third floor gallery pop-up! Flood Zone centers around themes of sustainability, investigating the ways we help keep each other afloat in a changing world. Stop by DVAA to place your bid!

I try to posit my world, my ephemera and my body as being part of the natural world as opposed to in it, to depict a pile of loose change as intentionally as I would a leaf.

Sara Mae: What is something you hope people will take away from this piece?

Ash Fritzsche: In many ways this piece is just me describing the way I see, but I hope others can relate to this sort of frenzied notation. It is impossible to focus these days, the world is overwhelming and we are in an epidemic of burnout - emotional and physical. And despite all that, life is still beautiful. I try to posit my world, my ephemera and my body as being part of the natural world as opposed to in it, to depict a pile of loose change as intentionally as I would a leaf. I think it’s easy to understand humankind as being outside of nature, perhaps an antithesis to nature, but if we view ourselves as nature, as an integral part of it, as equals to the flowers and stars and lizards, made by the universe and of the universe - all of a sudden the universe’s laws of creation and destruction apply to our systems, our mistakes and even our horrendous politics. And then you can release judgment and forgive yourself. And maybe you can look at your messy nightstand and think of it as a wild meadow.

Sara Mae: What is your relationship with sustainability? 

Ash Fritzsche: As far as my practice goes, I stopped using solvents when oil painting because they make my throat hurt and they’re terrible for the planet.

All art practices require and demand sustainability - we know this when we think of our body, our finances, and our time, but for some reason ecological sustainability isn’t automatically implied in our practices.

As a lithographer it is much more challenging. Stone lithography is strangely archaic and simple - you draw on a stone with grease, polish it with grit, draw on it again, etc, there are no plastics involved, the matrix is wildly reusable -- in many ways it's great. The element that’s not sustainable is the etching process and all of its chemicals: nitric acid, lithotine, and asphaltum are tricky to substitute. But I have hope! Lithography is technically the newest of our printmaking methods, and I don’t think we have fully flushed out its possibilities. Many people are actively exploring alternatives. Luckily the tech industry uses a form of lithography to print circuitry, so I’m hoping those guys will figure out some products that we can bring back into printshops otherwise, my back-up plan is monoprinting. 

All art practices require and demand sustainability - we know this when we think of our body, our finances, and our time, but for some reason ecological sustainability isn’t automatically implied in our practices. I think this is almost a semantic issue: as a culture we have othered sustainability and green living, and so unsustainability is our implied neutral. It’s a major disservice we are doing to ourselves. I think language is so important. Just like policy makers messed up with the term global warming, they goofed by naming and underlining sustainability. Imagine if our “renewable” energies were simply called energy, and we referred to coal and gas as polluting energies. What an effect that would have on our policies. 

Just like policy makers messed up with the term global warming, they goofed by naming and underlining sustainability.

Ash Fritzsche is a tradeswoman and artist living and working in West Philadelphia. An electrician by trade, Ash spends as much time as possible practicing lithography and painting. She is motivated by a love for process, science, the mystical and alternative narrative-making. Fritzsche is our 2024 Linda Lee Alter Fellowship and their work will be shown October 2024 in Gallery 1.

Fritzsche’s work is available to purchase at the Silent Auction (among many others) in our Third Floor Gallery from April 4 -21. Stop by Catharine Street!

If you have questions about dvaa’s SHOP, please direct them to our ProGRAMMING COORDINATOR at saramae@davinciartalliance.org

Sara Mae Henke (They/Them) is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their creative writing and research orbits around horror and the surreal as it contextualizes gender. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Scholar and 2022 Tinhouse Summer Writing Workshops alum. Recently, they were a finalist for the Loraine Williams Prize and have work forthcoming or published in Passages North, the Georgia Review, the Offing, and FENCE. They write music as The Noisy and received their MFA from UT Knoxville. They are currently an Adjunct English Professor at Drexel and an Executive Assistant at Da Vinci Art Alliance.