Ashley Lusietto
Virtual Residency
Mid-2020
Throughout 2020, the Bubbler team fostered conversations with artists-in-residence affected by closures and stay-at-home orders during the pandemic to learn about their experiences during this time—ranging from being stuck in another country far from home, to supporting their kids through the struggles of virtual learning, to graduating from an MFA program which came to an abrupt halt. Their diverse realities during this challenging time helped inform our engagement process, especially in creatively planning how to reach and support families in need of creative learning outlets.
Ashley Lusietto makes autobiographical works that confront ingrained feminine self-consciousness and alter-egos through painting, sculpture, and performance. Ashley recently earned her MFA at UW-Madison. She has done several public art projects including Big-Head Puppet performances. An exhibition, Fell Into The Honey, was at the Art + Lit Laboratory, Madison, and her work was included in PSG on PAPER, an online exhibition in 2020. She is currently part of the MARN Mentor program, as a mentee to Della Wells.
After beginning to work with Ashley in 2019 through workshops at Hawthorne Library and a mural at Central Library, excitement from the library community grew when Ashley was announced as an artist-in-residence in 2020.
Lusietto also made a recent addition to the library’s permanent collection: a large mural spanning four walls on Central Library’s first floor. Titled “She Herself,” the piece depicts Lusietto’s self-portraits entwined in an Argentine tango, exploring moments of connection, both harmonious and dissonant, within a self-relationship.
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