'Moments in Time:' CCCC art instructor shares passion in exhibit
by Mark Rogers, The Sanford Herald
Photo by Mark Rogers, The Sanford Herald
For Phillip Ashe, a lifetime of art in varied disciplines shows a diversity in both materials and vision.
The Central Carolina Community College art instructor had a gallery exhibition open earlier this week in Asheboro, and took a moment to reflect on his work at the opening night reception Tuesday.
Phillip Ashe: “Moments in Time” will be on display at the Randolph Arts Guild in Asheboro until August. 29.
Ashe’s works included everything from stone carving and metal casting to print making and encaustic painting. He said that he’s done a lot of work recently using different techniques in encaustic painting.
“The show is called ‘Moments in Time,’ because it’s a snapshot of different phases of the last 15 years or so,” Ashe said. “It’s pretty diverse. It’s got everything from mono printing, drawing on top of mono prints, but most of it is encaustic. It’s a wax-based paint that is mixed with damar. It’s basically like a tree sap — like pine sap — the crystals that develop on the tree, it’s like that. It makes it hard and gives a sheen to it. You can do everything with it.”
Ashe said that he comes from a sculpture background, so when he does encaustic painting he does a lot of carving with it.
“You can even do something like embedding a collage into the wax,” he said. “There’s so much you can do to it. It’s very sculptural. For a sculptor it’s a good thing to work with. I really work from the gut. It’s intuitive. It’s emotions from the gut. I wouldn’t call it intellectual, it’s much more on the intuitive side.”
Ashe teaches at CCCC in Sanford and at the Pittsboro campus. Previously, he taught in the pottery studio and metal sculpture.
“Now, I’m teaching art appreciation, art history and drawing,” he said.
Ashe said his favorite medium to work in currently is encaustic.
I’d say encaustic because it is so versatile,” he said. “I’m someone who likes so many things and I love to experiment. It’s just what I do. Everything has something unique to it.”
The Randolph Arts Guild is located at 123 Sunset Ave. in Asheboro. More information can be found on the website, www.randolphartsguild.com.