Ashlynn Browning & Austin Ballard
Veiled Spirits, an exhibition by Ashlynn Browning and Austin Ballard, presents work that conceals and reveals abstracted forms. Browning layers and obfuscates her painting surfaces to partially expose windows within, while Ballard blends the organic with the manufactured in his extruded sculptures. The work in Veiled Spirits suggests the psychological nuances of personified forms and begs the question of what stories lie underneath and beyond the surface.
Images by Mike Jensen
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Ashlynn Browning earned BA degrees in Studio Art and English from Meredith College in 2000 and her MFA in painting and printmaking from the University of NC at Greensboro in 2002. She has received grants and residency fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, United Arts Council, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Select exhibitions include the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, Whitespace, Atlanta, GA, CUE Foundation, New York, NY, and Hemphill Fine Arts, Washington, DC.
Browning’s work was featured in the 2009, 2015, and 2020 Southern Edition of the national publication, New American Paintings. She has been reviewed by The Brooklyn Rail, Burnaway, The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her work is included in the newly released book Art of the State, featuring a selection of NC artists.
Browning is represented by Whitespace, Atlanta, GA, Hodges Taylor, Charlotte, NC and IdeelArt, London, UK. Her recent curatorial projects include a 2020 exhibition of contemporary painting entitled Front Burner: Highlights in Contemporary North Carolina Painting for the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC.
Austin Ballard, born in Charlotte, NC, received an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, where he also served as an Assistant Professor in Textiles. Ballard has received numerous awards including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Scholarship, a Windgate Foundation Fellowship, a Kenneth Stubbs Endowed Fellowship, a Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, the Chenven Foundation Grant and the Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Studies Grant. He has been awarded full fellowships to the Museum of Arts and Design, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Ox-Bow School of Art, the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, and the McColl Center for Art + Innovation. Ballard has been featured in Maake Magazine, Art Maze Magazine, Wall Street International and Wide Walls. Ballard has held solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon, NY, Wave Hill, NY, Napoleon, PA, Real Art Ways, CT, and Ithaca College among others. Upcoming shows include Mckenzie Fine Art in New York, NY and Whitespace in Atlanta, GA. He currently lives and works in Ridgewood, NY.