Ashley Pridmore (American/New York, 20th c.) , "Guarding Nefertiti", 2014, papier mâché and beeswax, unsigned, h. 5 1/4 in., w. 8 1/4 in., d. 4 1/4 in . Ill.: Reed, Julia. "Sculptor Ashley Pridmore's Wild Talent". Garden and Gun. Aug/Sept 2018 Provenance: Estate of Julia Evans Reed. Note: Ashley Pridmore is a mixed media artist from the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York who travels extensively throughout the Gulf Coast. Pridmore earned a BFA in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and apprenticed with Texas-born artist John Alexander, whose New York studio she managed for seven years. Pridmore’s childhood was filled with the natural world, a theme which now dominates her spiritual and haunting drawings and sculptures. As Julia Reed wrote in Garden & Gun: “Once in Pridmore’s hands, her ‘objects’ no longer exactly exist in nature. A papier-mâché and beeswax coyote skull called Guarding Nefertiti [offered here] for example, is adorned with incredibly lifelike but highly unlikely barnacles. Yet the piece looks as if it somehow evolved that way, as does a sea horse whose spine has sprouted porcupine quills and crab-apple thorns, or a piece of found pine with tiny brass brads climbing its crevices like an especially glossy fungus. The works, she says, ‘tell a new story’ when the contrasting components combine.” Ref.: Reed, Julia. “Sculptor Ashley Pridmore’s Wild Talent.” Garden & Gun. Aug./Sep. 2018. www.gardenandgun.com Accessed Dec. 31, 2020