The Arts & Business Council, Blackbird Media, and F&M Bank have teamed up to present the Artist of the Week on The Nashville Sign. This week’s featured artist is Asia Mathis!
Asia Mathis is a sculptor who creates beautiful, thoughtful, and emotionally satisfying clay pieces using the human figure and nature imagery. She hand builds her ceramic sculpture from stoneware clay and uses under-glazes, stains, and glazes for the surfaces.
“My work centers around the human search for authenticity and belonging. The question of modern identity, or where we are truly at home when much of our ancestral culture may have dissolved, been actively destroyed, or is one in which we do not wish to be a part.”
She explains that her work reflects her personal experiences around society’s modern problem of being disconnected from the land and its creatures, an issue that she says creates a hole in our identity.
Asia began her relationship with clay during high school art class and went on to earn her Bachelor of Fine Art from Middle Tennessee State University. She spent the next few years developing her ceramic skills and her signature style while earning a living showing at Nashville galleries and touring the country exhibiting and selling at arts and craft fairs.
In 2009, she stepped away from travel and her studio to focus on parenting and homeschooling her first child. She returned to studio life in 2018 and is continuing her journey with clay through continued education and consistent creation. She has taught workshops at Buchanan Arts and at Centennial Arts Center in Nashville. Her work was recently featured in the “Best of Tennessee Craft” exhibition at the Tennessee State Museum, and she is a member of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild.
To learn more about Asia Mathis and her work, visit asiamathisart.com.
Want to be featured on The Nashville Sign? Visual artists working in any medium, who are members* of the Arts & Business Council at the Basic Level ($30 annually) or above, are eligible to apply for Artist of the Week on The Nashville Sign.
*Those unable to become members due to financial barriers can be granted a waiver. Contact us at info@abcnashville.org to be confidentially considered for a waiver.