Ashley Delaney
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Mixed media artist creating layered works from reclaimed materials, exploring renewal, memory, and the quiet magic of transformation.
Message
Ashley Delaney is a mixed media artist based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, whose work explores the transformative power of change, renewal, and reinvention. Working with reclaimed textiles, found objects, and remnants of past lives, Delaney creates compositions that honor the histories embedded in her materials while imagining what else they might become. Her practice is rooted in the belief that transformation is both a creative and personal act—an ongoing process of unmaking and becoming.
Delaney earned her BFA in Theatrical Design with a concentration in Costuming from Abilene Christian University in 2008. Early influences—her mother’s overflowing craft drawers, her great-grandmother’s sewing machine, and hours spent antiquing with her grandfather—cultivated her love for storytelling, tactility, and the beauty of objects that carry memory. Those formative experiences, along with her costume design background, continue to shape her sense of narrative, texture, and material intuition.
In her studio practice, Delaney works primarily with reclaimed and recycled materials, dismantling them through a process of creative deconstruction before reassembling them into layered, cohesive forms. Her approach merges sustainability with reverence: every frayed edge and weathered scrap becomes part of a new visual language, a continuation of the stories embedded within the materials she gathers. She views each piece as a collaboration—not only with her own instincts, but with the unknown hands and histories that came before.
Delaney’s work has been featured in numerous regional and national exhibitions, including juried shows at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Abilene, Kai Lin Art in Atlanta, and the Association for Visual Arts in Chattanooga. Her pieces have found homes across the United States and abroad, including in Austria. She is an active member of Chattanooga’s arts community and has exhibited widely throughout the region.
Looking ahead, Delaney continues to expand the boundaries of her practice—creating work that invites viewers to slow down, look closely, and experience the quiet magic of transformation. She remains committed to sustainable making, material storytelling, and the belief that fragments—whether objects or people—carry endless potential for renewal.
Statement
My work traces the cycles of transformation—the way fragments can be undone, reimagined, and reborn as something whole. I am drawn to overlooked materials: worn textiles, broken jewelry, scraps of paper, fibers pulled from something that once had another life. These fragments are never just objects; they are carriers of memory. A frayed edge, a tarnished clasp, or a faded thread all hold the weight of what came before. In my practice, imperfection is not a flaw to erase but an invitation to imagine what else might emerge.
I work primarily with reclaimed and recycled materials. My process begins with gathering, following instinct toward what resonates. Then comes unmaking—tearing, cutting, dismantling. From there, I layer, stitch, and compose, allowing the materials to guide me as much as I guide them. Sometimes the work becomes a wall piece, sometimes a garment or object of use, sometimes something unexpected. Each piece is a dialogue between what was and what could be, shaped by both curiosity and care.
This work matters to me because it mirrors how I live. Art is how I respond to the world—how I process, how I protest, how I play, how I pray. By giving fragments new life, I honor what came before while embracing the possibilities of change. My pieces are rooted in becoming, in the truth that we are all works in progress—always transforming, always evolving, always carrying the possibility of renewal.