Hanging out, drinking delicious coffee, talking about art… ahhhh, that’s the life! Well, that IS the life at least for an hour or so each month at the Dunedin Fine Art Center’s Coffee and Conversation series. Enjoy coffee (Presented by the Sterling Society of DFAC) and insights as each month’s invited guest holds forth on their own area of expertise. Admission to these relaxed talks is $5 and is FREE to current DFAC members.
Thursday, May 18th, 2023 at 12 noon
The series welcomes artist Ashley Cassens.
Title of the presentation: Making a Living as an Artist
“I’m a painter, sometimes on fabric, sometimes on walls!”
“You can find me listening to true crime podcasts, on a ladder, vigorously applying more sunscreen (they don’t call Florida the sunshine state for nothing!), ferrying my 5 y/o to and from her extracurriculars, and at least 1-3 sports teams in the Tampa Bay area.”
“I don’t buy into the starving artist ethos and preach passionately about living creatively, with purpose.”
“I love to learn about EVERYTHING (enneagram 5), and am happiest when I eat a peanut butter waffle each morning.”
– Ashley Cassens
Bio
Ashley Cassens is a native Floridian who earned her BFA from Florida Southern College in 2006 and an MFA from Florida Atlantic University in 2017. In addition to her Graduate Teaching Assistantship in the MFA program, she has been awarded the Provost Fellowship, two Graduate Advisory Board Grants, a Friedland Grant, a Rothenberger Scholarship, an Ambassador of the Arts Scholarship, and was twice awarded a Women in the Visual Arts Scholarship.
She has exhibited her work at the ARC Gallery in Chicago, The Cornell Museum in Delray Beach, the Box Gallery in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach State College in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. She has studied in workshops with Julian Schnabel and Steven Assael. In 2016 she worked at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL in museum education, furthering her passion for teaching. She is certified to teach Art K-12 and taught K-5 Art for the past five years in the Tampa area.
Her recent portrait paintings juxtapose craft and crushingly lovely figure painting in her favorite medium, oil paint.
In 2022, she quit teaching full time to create custom art. You can find her painting walls and canvas in the Tampa Bay area.
She has since been featured on Daytime on Channel 8, Fox 13 Tampa Bay, and Creative Loafing. Her work has been licensed by Home Goods and has illustrated an upcoming book.
So stop by for some Coffee & Conversation.
Or call ahead to the Palm Cafe’ (727-298-DFAC ext: 237) and have lunch waiting for you!
Coffee and Conversation with Ashley Cassens – Thursday, May 18, 2023 at 12 Noon.
Dunedin Fine Art Center
1143 Michigan Blvd.
Dunedin, FL 34698
727-298-DFAC
www.dfac.org
