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Ashton Martell Bird

@birdashton

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𝘽𝙊𝙉𝙀𝘿𝙍𝙔

recycled pallet wood, clays, window liner, plaster, dirt, debris, tin, cloth, caulking, and roofing felt acrylic, gesso, cardboard

32'x14'x14'

𝘽𝙊𝙉𝙀𝘿𝙍𝙔 is a provisional architecture built from scarcity: recycled pallet wood, clays, window liner, plaster, dirt, debris, tin, cloth, caulking, and roofing felt assembled at a scale that feels both protective and precarious. Working at the seam between shelter and ruin, I treat the installation as a fortification made of leftovers: a place where material limits dictate form, and every fix, a patch, a brace, a smear of caulk, reads like a line in a diary of survival. The work extends my practice of constructing environments and textured assemblages that mirror the rise and drift of our structures that we create, but here the edges are intentionally unstable.

An austere, bone-dry carapace that can read as resilient one moment and indicting the next. 𝘽𝙊𝙉𝙀𝘿𝙍𝙔 courts a scary illusion of stability, revealing a flicker of psychosis: the sense that what we’ve built isn’t as sound or as grand as we insist, that progress and decay are happening at once. In that tension, the piece asks how we keep building, artistically, socially, architecturally—when the best we have are limited resources and the uneasy knowledge that our foundations might not hold. "Just keep going..."

Tallahassee, Florida, USA taken in Tallahassee, Florida by @birdashton

66

5

a year ago

𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝘾𝙖𝙣 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙥 & 𝙎𝙢𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙨?

acrylic, graphite, tape, wood, drywall, rug, cardboard

16.5'x11'x13'

𝙃𝙤𝙬 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙮 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝘾𝙖𝙣 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙥 & 𝙎𝙢𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙨? is an abstract domestic scene that stages how reactionary ideology and contemporary political fetishization seep into décor where symbols meant to guard, purify, or reassure are softened into display objects. Trim lines, shelf-like planes, and tidy arrangements turn politics into lifestyle, converting conflict into color and emblem. It nods to the nostalgic rhetoric disturbingly championed by figures like Donald Trump—the promise to “return” to the so-called good old days—when in reality, for many, those days never were; the nostalgia operates as fantasy at best, a selective memory cloaked in homey aesthetics.

At the center sits a cardboard daisy which I am using as an oxymoron for innocence. The title’s counsel to “stop and smell the flowers” reads like a wellness script, soothing, marketable, endlessly repeatable until the phrase itself feels spent, even outdated, a ritual of avoidance that papers over harm with seasonal cheer. The work asks how many times we can rehearse the false gestures, and why as a public audience we decide to just huddle as a herd and look the other way?

𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 & 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴
Klauzál6 Projekt Galéria
1072 Budapest
Klauzál tér 6
Budapest, Hungary taken in Budapest, Hungary by @birdashton

19

0

a year ago

𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝, 𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮 & 𝙤𝙧𝙚

recycled pallet wood, clays, window liner, plaster, dirt, debris, tin, cloth, caulking, roofing

~30'x18'x10' & variable

𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙝, 𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮 & 𝙤𝙧𝙚 is a fortification built in the weather of exhaustion. Its surface reads like a repair log: patches, braces, caulk lines. The title folds labor into flesh: earth as site, body as tool, ore as the promise we keep extracting from ourselves. The work asks how long endurance can substitute for safety and how far willpower can be stretched. On a personal level, it describes psychological exhaustion, the compulsion to keep producing even as the seams and temporary fixes show. The pursuit of “more” looks compelling from a distance but hollow up close; pushed far enough, it becomes a harmful, obsessive loop. Inside, seams are left exposed; the structure stages permanence with impermanent things.

At a larger scale, it points to nations and economies psychologically accelerated to build at inhuman rates, measuring worth by output rather than care, and asks what that does to bodies, materials, and civic life. It names a psychology of extraction—motivation organized by production—where the self is mined until nothing remains. Build more, but with what? And at what cost?

Tallahassee, Florida, USA taken in Tallahassee, Florida by @birdashton

26

2

a year ago

𝙓𝙄𝘼𝙊'𝙎 𝘿𝘼𝙔𝘿𝙍𝙀𝘼𝙈

acrylic, graphite, crayon, pastel, gesso, cardboard, tape, watercolor paper

5'x5' painting x variable dimensions within installation

𝙓𝙄𝘼𝙊'𝙎 𝘿𝘼𝙔𝘿𝙍𝙀𝘼𝙈 grew out of my residency in Joshua Tree and exhibition 𝘋𝘈𝘠𝘋𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘔 in SOMA, San Francisco and extends my inquiry into agency, optimism, disillusionment, and utopia: treating politics like gravity, an invisible field that shapes what we see, breathe, discard, and desire.

During this period I took a focused week in Joshua Tree to make new work; that desert studio became a proving ground as I returned to the U.S. after more than a year in Europe, taught as a visiting professor, and navigated reverse culture shock alongside what I experienced as professional harassment from my director, who later stepped down. The passively violent experience left me with a quiet guilt after the residency, where I felt that I didn’t measure up to what the project might have been for Xiao, the host, because those pressures bent my bandwidth and attention. As said, the harassment was violent, and this painting holds some of that pressure using compressed color, halting rhythms and frayed edges to translate injury into form. This work fossilized much tragedy to me, and within that I see self-endurance and willpower.

Rather than retreat, I used instability as material, testing how painting and site-specific installation can metabolize pressure into structures that hold both care and critique, and asking whether imagination, self-awareness, and re-seeing can outpace the scripts imposed on us.

𝘋𝘈𝘠𝘋𝘙𝘌𝘈𝘔, Private event, SOMA
San Francisco, California, US taken in San Francisco, California by @birdashton

18

1

a year ago

𝙃𝘼𝙉𝙂𝙐𝙋 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝘾𝙊𝘼𝙏, 𝙇𝙀𝙏𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙈𝘼𝙉’𝙎 𝙅𝘼𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙏

acrylic, graphite, crayon, gesso, cardboard, tape, found coat rack

8.5'x7'x15'x variable

𝙃𝘼𝙉𝙂𝙐𝙋 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝘾𝙊𝘼𝙏, 𝙇𝙀𝙏𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙈𝘼𝙉’𝙎 𝙅𝘼𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙏 is rooted in my upbringing in a small rural town in Elk Point, South Dakota, USA. It begins with the idea of non-binary as a private becoming an unfolding beyond the family’s knowing, capability, or reach: a life chosen in partition due to unyielding head-strung conservative values. The jacket: a uniform of Friday Night Lights hopes and rituals of belonging, hangs without a body; it is a costume of a false fantasy left on the wall while the artist steps into a life of their own making. What appears to be simple etiquette, “hang up your coat” — becomes a rite of passage. It marks the refusal of a scripted, formulaic gender, whether conservative or liberal, policed by hometown hierarchy and merit rituals.

When I later moved to Tallahassee, I encountered an equal number of “alternative” tropes, new codes, new uniforms. But what if you choose neither? What if you reject the script and the rebellion, living outside both American boxes? It either is or it is not is entirely false, and I believe more people are truly starting to think this way in terms of our culture as old structures crumble. It took until my early thirties to fully take authorship of this idea and claim an identity that is self-authored, authentic, and untethered from either pole.

The upside-down obelisk enters here as a counter-monument. Traditionally a symbol of power, victory, and permanence — towering and pointing toward the heavens — it is flipped on its head. In this inversion, it becomes precarious, revealing the fragility and arbitrariness of those hierarchies. Its point drives downward, toward the earth: toward the commons, toward labor, toward us. The gesture redirects attention away from worshiping elites and re-roots us in the collective ground of shared struggle and solidarity against the plutocracy openly sitting in the Oval Office.

𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 & 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴
Klauzál6 Projekt Galéria
1072 Budapest
Klauzál tér 6
Budapest, Hungary taken in Budapest, Hungary by @birdashton

20

1

a year ago

𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙌𝙐𝙀𝙏 & 𝘾𝙃𝙀𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙍 𝘾𝙊𝙇𝙐𝙈𝙉𝙎

wood, discarded faux flowers, curtain, cloth, canvas, foam board, acrylic paint, pastels

~18.5'x15'x14'

B𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙌𝙐𝙀𝙏 & 𝘾𝙃𝙀𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙍 𝘾𝙊𝙇𝙐𝙈𝙉𝙎 draws inspiration from Repair Together, an effort raising funds for Ukrainian immigrants displaced by the war with Russia, and from the Prelude pop-up, as well as the Czech Republic’s Den lásky (“Day of Love”). On Den lásky I watched people carry simple bouquets and spend time with loved ones rather than buy things; in this romantic tradition, couples kiss beneath a blossoming cherry tree to ensure their love and beauty endure throughout the year. The day felt authentic and unhurried, communal and tender, rather than materialistic and fleeting or tiered trending.

𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙌𝙐𝙀𝙏 & 𝘾𝙃𝙀𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙍 𝘾𝙊𝙇𝙐𝙈𝙉𝙎 uses an abstracted bouquet of flowers resting on checker-pattern columns to symbolize empathy, fragility, and love, qualities necessary to become aware of the past, understand the present, and realize progress. The checker-pattern columns serve as a metaphor for the political structures that govern our existence, the rule-bound grid that supports without softening, statically holding the bouquet just above the ground. The work asks whether such structures can be re-patterned to cradle vulnerability, turning love from décor into shared civic practice.

𝘗𝘙𝘌𝘓𝘜𝘋𝘌 𝘗𝘖𝘗 𝘜𝘗
LOFT BUBNY
U Papírny 100/2
Praha 7, Holešovice
Prague, Czech Republic taken in Prague, Czech Republic by @birdashton

19

0

a year ago

𝙋𝙄𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙏𝙁𝙀𝙉𝘾𝙀

found picket fence, recycled woods, tin, clays, drywall, window liner, roofing felt, charcoal

29.5'x14'x9'

𝙋𝙄𝘾𝙆𝙀𝙏𝙁𝙀𝙉𝘾𝙀 presents the modest promise of home, then pulls it apart. Outside, everything reads as roses and fresh paint, the postcard ideal of security; inside, love is splintered and conversation does not land. I reflect on a personal history where secrets were kept, both in my timeline and our family’s, so thoroughly that we do not know who one another are, and we judge from the outside in.

Politics moves into the living room, turning relationships into loyalty tests and dissolving the means for real connection, while the family offers little support. The fence has been ripped from the perimeter and stacked in a pile of broken, splintered pickets, paint flaking, bullet holes and nails bent: a visible heap of what was meant to protect. That pile reads as a ledger of damage and survival, proof of what we were asked to live with and climb over. The work asks why these fences persist, what they are protecting, and whether we can rebuild structures that hold accountability, conversation, and care. Are you keeping up with the Joneses yet?

Carnegie Arts Building
Tallahassee, Florida, USA taken in Tallahassee, Florida by @birdashton

46

9

a year ago

𝙎𝘼𝙉𝘿𝘽𝘼𝙂𝙂𝙄𝙉'

acrylic, graphite, crayon, pastel, gesso, cardboard, tape, watercolor paper

10.5'x8.5'xvariable

𝙎𝘼𝙉𝘿𝘽𝘼𝙂𝙂𝙄𝙉' is an installation that confronts the draconian fantasy of a border wall and the vast machinery that sustains it: the prison industrial complex, the U.S. military industrial complex, and the compromised ethics of architects enlisted to give these systems a veneer of design. The work treats the wall not only as a line of exclusion but as a domestic enclosure that traps us inside. It is choreography of checkpoints, contracts, and credentialed gatekeepers that keeps citizens from truly flourishing. In this frame, the military industrial complex isn’t a distant apparatus, it’s the siphon that drains public wealth into perpetual defense, starving education, housing, healthcare, and our social safety nets or what is left of them in the US. The wall becomes a symbol of how fear is engineered into policy.

At the same time, 𝙎𝘼𝙉𝘿𝘽𝘼𝙂𝙂𝙄𝙉'' points to the smaller walls that pacify us. Our “little treats,” conveniences and scrollable comforts that numb collective will. We’re conditioned to accept containment so long as the gate opens now and then with a perk or a coupon as we mistake distraction for freedom, consumption for participation. The installation gathers these tensions in material form. It is a barricade from truth we are not supposed to have.

𝙎𝘼𝙉𝘿𝘽𝘼𝙂𝙂𝙄𝙉''
Atlanta Contemporary
535 Means St NW
Atlanta, Georgia, USA taken in Atlanta,Georgia by @birdashton

20

3

a year ago

𝙒𝙞𝙯𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙃𝙖𝙩

acrylic, graphite, crayon, pastel, gesso, cardboard, tape, found wooden banister

14'x8.5'xvariable

𝙒𝙞𝙯𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙃𝙖𝙩 stages the fantasy of magic as a political illusion. The image of the pointed hat, scattered with stars, suggests the childhood promise that anything can be conjured out of thin air. Yet in this work, the hat is unstable tilted, collapsing, patched with raw marks and fragile, murky surfaces. The bright stars glow like charms, but they read more as distractions than as protections: the promise of safety or progress dangled just out of reach, like the proverbial carrot on a stick.

This illusion parallels the American Dream as it has been sold in recent decades: an endlessly repeating spectacle of possibility that in reality keeps citizens chasing but never arriving. The “magic out of the hat” is not personal agency but someone else’s sleight of hand, a trick staged by political actors who control the stage itself. Under administrations like Trump’s—and mirrored in much fascist leaning rhetoric—the hat becomes less about wonder and more about manipulation, a prop for nationalist theater in which spectacle covers over the erosion of rights, media control, and the tightening grip of far-right power.

By translating this imagery into raw materials: graphite scratches, ghostly layers of paint, the precarious checkerboard installation overhead, the work exposes the upside-down reality that our lives may be structured by someone else’s conjuring. The magic we are told to believe in is not our own; it is manufactured, staged, and wielded to distract us while the foundations erode beneath our feet.

𝙒𝙞𝙯𝙖𝙧𝙙 𝙃𝙖𝙩 unsettles this illusion by refusing polish and permanence. It asks what happens when we stop believing in the tricks, when we notice the scaffolding behind the show.

𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 & 𝘱𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴
Klauzál6 Projekt Galéria
1072 Budapest
Klauzál tér 6
Budapest, Hungary taken in Budapest, Hungary by @birdashton

24

1

a year ago