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Jamie Ashforth

@jamie_ashforth

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Artist: Materializing Connection

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Touch CXXIV | Matriarchy

The Queens of the Fjord

Last year, this generous group of Hardanger women invited me to join their weekly fjord-swimming ritual. The experience embedded itself in me so deeply thanks to the heightened physicality of icy cold winter water, the simple yet gentle gestures surrounding each swim, and their steadfast commitment to togetherness.

After my first swim, I made a note to my future elder self to remember there are empowered ways of being in the world, in connection, and in my body, as an aging woman. There are so many more layers to this experience, I won’t put them all into words right here. But upon my leaving, I thanked the group - as the Queens of the Fjord. Who knew they’d keep the name, and in English no less.

Returning this spring, I was motivated to materialize this shared space of gathering. To make something wearable that would express the connection and archive the ritual. The swimming poncho that resulted is a true reflection of the 10 pairs of hands that met, swam, and knit it to life.

Every Queen, she needs her crown. And so I worked secretly to build them one - of the fjord, for its swimmers, informed by the local Hardanger textile traditions.

We now have one shared, wearable sculpture - royal garb - reflecting the unity of the group, and the invitation to be self-authorizing.

This project wasn’t preconceived, but a response to a kind of collective imagining. “Veine blir til mens man går” they said, ‘the road is made as you walk’. And we found our way together, one step at a time.

The Queens of the Fjord are Aud, Irene, Anne Sk., Ingelin, Margaret, Anne St., Randi Irene, Lillian, and Ingrid. They’re adamant that I am one too, though I feel like just a pup in comparison to their wisdom. This project belongs to all 10 of us. And it continues…

To say I am grateful, or thankful, would be an immense understatement. The glassy-eyed hugs say it all.

Tusen takk, my swimmers.

In a moment in our global history when divisiveness threatens incomprehensible harm, concretizing our connectivity is an antidote I seek to activate through artistic practice.

📷 by @cecikim_ (so truly grateful) taken in Hardangerfjorden by @jamie_ashforth

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a year ago

I find that the gap between periods of artistic production can be somewhat complex experiences to navigate. That oscillation between momentum, inertia and back to momentum again brings a certain amount of discomfort with it. In a poignant conversation with some colleagues recently, we landed on there being value in weathering this discomfort, riding out the seemingly fallow periods. But also consciously reminding ourselves how many future works are germinating just below the surface because we allow the change of pace.

I’m finding that revisiting older work is a valuable tool that helps with bridging this gap through slower periods - linking past with future work. So what benefit now to have this time capsuled snapshot to literally hear in my own voice all that urged new work forwards as I wrapped up my artist residency at @uillinnwestcorkarts late last year. The same questions about agency, authorship, responsibility, care and authority still spark brightly.

My project, Speaking to Absence, became a through line for me for concurrent residencies as an Inhouse 2 artist-in-residence at @guesthouse_collective and our Expanding Island @cpwestcorkislands funded island residency. In these experiences of intensive, shall we say, external production, it’s not lost on me what significant support comes within arts-based social and collective support.

To the continued widening of those networks now, and the benefit of changes of pace.

Special thanks to Petrina and @uillinnwestcorkarts for taking the time to catch this reflective moment. by @jamie_ashforth

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2 years ago

Please join me next Sunday Oct 31st for ‘Groundswell’, a transatlantic experiment linking place, time, and people through your participation. Adjust to your time zone!
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Swipe for more details or message with questions.
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This event is rooted in my current curiosity about touch and blurring the space between near + far, foreign + familiar, and body + environment. I would love to have you involved! taken in Worldwide by @jamie_ashforth

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5 years ago

Delighted to have two pieces included in the group show ‘Anseo / Elsewhere’ at @uillinnwestcorkarts
The show closes this coming Saturday September 19.

Uillinn writes that ‘Anseo / Elsewhere’ is a group exhibition exploring experiences of dislocation and divided presence. Artists engage with the experience of being physically present in one place while mentally or emotionally elsewhere. The exhibition approaches dislocation as both a geographical and psychological experience, shaped by memory, migration, longing and the demands of contemporary life. To be “anseo” is to exist in the immediacy of the present, while simultaneously inhabiting an “elsewhere” informed by distant homes, past experiences or imagined futures. Bringing together work across multiple disciplines, the exhibition explores themes of estrangement, fragmented perspectives and personal narrative, reflecting on the shifting relationship between place, identity and belonging.

These ideas are strikingly resonate with themes in my own practice and it is wonderful to be included in the exhibition. I developed these works while artist in residence at Cill Rialaig, County Kerry, this past May.

Anseo is an Irish word, and like so many, has a spectrum of meaning as is described above.

So wish I was close enough to see the show myself. Please visit on my behalf, if you are able!

📷 1 ‘The Slow and Steady Footsteps of Her Return II”, Hand-dyed wool, paper, and thread, 2026

📷 2 “Stillness Between/ Hearths”, Matches, paper, and wool, 2026

📷 2 “Stillness Between/ Hearths” - detail, Matches, paper, and wool, 2026

📷 2 care of @qaideenq , her face smiling in the reflection (Thank you for sending this to me!) “The Slow and Steady Footsteps of Her Return II” - installed by @jamie_ashforth

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a month ago

Delighted to be selected as an incoming member of the Backwater Artists Network @backwaterartists

As a graduate of the former MA in Art & Process at MTU Crawford College of Art & Design @mtu_crawford the artistic communities and opportunities in Cork have been an ongoing and integral part of my practice. I’m very much looking forward to strengthening my involvement from both near and afar moving forward. by @jamie_ashforth

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2 months ago

It is a true privilege to be invited into this rich and dynamic archive of artists deeply impacted by teaching and studying at @mountallison . I am humbled to have my work sit alongside some of Canada’s most influential artists, including classmates and professors of mine, in this most beautiful publication by New Brunswick’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery and @thaddeusholownia ‘s Anchorage Press. Thank you for included me.

As I’ve mentioned before, my experience at Mt. A had an tremendous impact on both my life and my art practice, reflected today in where I live, some of my most treasured relationships, my commitment to seek exploration vs comfort within artistic research, and the importance of making ‘secret work’. So many from this era of my life, recognized both in and outside of this publication, remain near and dear to me.

Thaddeus Holownia and John Leroux write, in the book’s forward: “Vision and innovation require encouragement, and a deeper understanding of what humans make and what humans transform is crucial. Mount Alison’s artistic voices embolden us to build empathy, to think critically, and to bridge gaps of understanding that we face everyday”. I couldn’t agree more.

As fellow classmate, Mary MacDonald said, ART = WORK. As far as I can see, it’s immeasurably important work at that.

Touch CXLIV | Legacy

📷 2 Mary Pratt, Glassy Apples, Oil on Canvas, 1994

📷 3 @steeves.dan , I find my own place in these deep rhythms, Etching on Rag Paper, 2004; Erik Edson, Sunset, Plywood, Black and Fluorescent Orange Paint, 2006

📷 4 @thaddeusholownia , Jolicure Pond, Colour Coupler Contact Print, 1996-2000

📷 5 @melanie.colosimo , Sync or Swim, polyethylene tank, 200 Denier TPU heat sealing fabric, recycled poly-cotton stuffing, reflective material, LED Lighting, up filtration and water pump, 2021

📷 6 Jamie Ashforth D̶e̶p̶a̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶/Juncture (Day 16 – Collision), Durational and participatory mixed media installation, Multiple Locations - Skibbereen, Ireland, 2022; Evan Furness, Frost Gloam, collaboration with Marti Hopson, Performance and Video Projection, 2023

📷 7 Gairdner Fine Arts Building (1964-1965), our art home, Mount Allison University by @jamie_ashforth

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4 months ago

Over the course of developing the Queens of the Fjord project while in residency in Norway last year, I learned two knitting stitches - *the* two knitting stitches - to contribute to our swimming poncho. I wouldn’t say I was all that good at it, but something in the gentleness of the gesture, the simplicity of the act, and my affinity for the texture of wool stuck with me. I’ve kept needles and yarn not all that far from hand since, despite knowing very little about what to do with them.

In following the impulse to have my hands on those materials, to take those tiny repetitive steps, linking, looping, gathering knots together, one-by-one-by-one-by-one, something beyond the material is happening. Yes, I’m knitting relatively flat pieces of textile, but I’ve also been gathering the somewhat disparate pieces of my own life together in the process.

For some reason still beyond my understanding, I have more than one place that puzzle-pieces perfectly into parts of me that light up brightly when in proximity. It’s like an exhale, a deeper breath than usual. Complexity usually arises when in distance, lights dim, eyes adjust, threads drop, as new strands take their place.

But knitting is of one thread. Not disparate parts quilted together, but distinctnesses like pattern and shape emerging from that one continuous line.

I feel that one continuous line now more than ever. Worlds knitting together.

Two feet on this island, off the coast of this continent, taking me by both hands, as if they were my own. A warm welcome, an inevitable return. I bring a sense of tending and being tended to with me now as I leave Ireland again, but certainly not for the last time. Proximity to my art practice also, and a renewed sense of my place here in this vast and active network of artists. I see the imprint of this space on my life in other places and the other places imprinting on here also. It’s one thread.

All my everything is beyond full, I am so grateful for you Ireland.

See you again soon.
Grá Mór, Slán

Touch CXLIII | Cohesion

📷 My most favourite place of all. Thank you for taking me back here @agatakluzniak taken in Toe Head Bay by @jamie_ashforth

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5 months ago

Day 13, Goodnight studio (but leave the light on for me)

Feeling deeply grateful for my incredibly meaningful time in residence in the Gaeltacht region of Baile an Sceilg, County Kerry. The chance to return to this treasure at what feels like the edge of the world has been such a rich experience. Many parts are stitched together when uninterrupted time is available to dedicate to the studio(s) like this.

This experience has reminded me that the widest of range within my art practice is available to me here in Ireland. Very much looking forward feeding that spark more regularly.

📷 4 Anne Marie Deacy taken in Ballinskelligs by @jamie_ashforth

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5 months ago

Day 12, Held by materials (stitches tell stories)

Touch CXLII | Immensity

“Judy: I imagine you’ve read Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, where he said that we all have this immensity within us. I take that to be that we all have the past, future and present within us. The future being what you’re dreaming about, what you might do. Or something somebody said takes you off into some place that’s not really real. And then the past, which is memories of things that are real. But again, you go into a kind of no man placement. Those are the starting points, perhaps, of going into this immensity which has nothing to do with anything that’s tangible. It’s just amazing, it’s like a trance.

Anni: I feel this in your work! I see it formally, both in your choice of working large scale and in your volume of stitching. It’s wild to see this volume of handiwork, this volume of singular stitches together en masse. […]

Anne Truitt wrote “The pain of poets seems to me unmitigated. They are denied the physical activity of studio work, which in itself, makes a supportive context for thought and feelings. In my 20’s, when I was writing poetry steadily, I heard words at a high pitch. On the deep, full notes of three dimensional form, demanding for its realization the physical committment of my whole body.
I floated into spaciousness. Using all my faculties, I could plumb deeper, without sinking forever.”

I love this idea that material practice balances the states of thinking and feeling, holding the immensity, reflecting the immensity. But there’s something about the physicality of working with materials that doesn’t allow you to fully sink into that immensity.

Judy: It catches you.

Anni: Yeah, it catches you.

Judy: But there’s also something about the gesture, I think it’s the gesture of weaving, or the gesture of stitching, it’s this receptive body thing that your whole body does get into […] And so I think, yes, […] what you make is catching you and holding you…”

Interview
@judithemartin in conversation with Anni Spadafora

Printed in the exhibition publication for
Quilts are Journals by Judith Martin
Feb 7 - Mar 7 2026
@100percentsilkshop taken in Ballinskelligs by @jamie_ashforth

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5 months ago

Day 11, Studio as reflection taken in Ballinskelligs by @jamie_ashforth

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5 months ago

Day 10, Studio Affect

Touch CXLI | Intertwined (So much work is invisible)

Knitting worlds together, roads appearing as we walk. taken in Ballinskelligs by @jamie_ashforth

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5 months ago

Day 9, Beach as studio

Feeling the frame/ The edges approach taken in Ballinskelligs Abbey by @jamie_ashforth

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5 months ago