Ashton S. Phillips is a socially and ecologically-engaged artist, researcher, and writer working with dirt, water, pollution, plasticity, and interspecies agents of (dis)repair as primary materials and collaborators. He is particularly interested in the transness of matter, the impurity of bodies, and the possibility of imperfect repair through mutual contamination and touch. His practice prioritizes collaboration, experimental play, speculative (un)making, and embodied research over linear inquiry, hierarchical methods, or stable results.   

Ashton grew up in “Chemical Valley” West Virginia, sharing water, ground, and sky with legions of forever chemicals spewing out of nearby plastic plants and mountain-top coal mines. Today, he is a resident artist at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, CA, where he maintains a living colony of polystyrene-metabolizing mealworm/beetles and a plastic-fertilized garden as trans ecological praxis. When he is not (un)making with, writing about, and caring for these shapeshifting creatures, he teaches about care, posthuman praxis, and creative action at Otis College of Art and Design, performs with the Pure Filth Society, and curates at Monte Vista Projects. 

Ashton’s multisensory installations have been exhibited across the United States and abroad, including recent solo shows, public art commissions, and projects at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles; Human Resources, LA; the Ely Center for Contemporary Arts; Automata Arts; Torrance Art Museum; Angels Gate Cultural Center; The Audubon Center at Debs Park; Maryland Institute College of Art; Cerritos College Art Gallery; and Glendale Central Park. 

Ashton holds an MFA in Studio Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art; a JD from the George Washington University Law School; and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Maryland. His creative and critical writing have been published by Trans Studies Quarterly; Antennae -  The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture; Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles; and Cambridge University Press. 

His work has been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; the Los Angeles County Department of Cultural Affairs; the One Institute; the Blade of Grass Foundation; ArtsUnited San Pedro; the City of Glendale; Synchromy Music; Heidi Duckler Dance; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Automata Arts; and the Friends of Torrance Art Museum.