Ashley Strazzinski (b. 1987) is a visual artist and creative placemaker. After working for three years as the Manager of Public Programs and Education at Aperture Foundation, she relocated from New York City to North Adams, Massachusetts with the desire to be a part of a smaller more accessible community and to follow her own creative pursuits. Strazzinski is the founder of a small, self-publishing imprint, soft-boiled, which produces a bi-weekly zine series that chronicles North Adams City Council meetings, among other topics of interest. In May 2018 she launched a pilot program, Ashland Street Project Space, in which she will occupy a storefront in downtown North Adams for five months. Ashland will serve as soft-boiled HQ as well as an event and lounge space for the community. The larger mission of the space is to learn more about the long-time residents of North Adams and to create positive connections with the newer, incoming residents, and to develop the concept of a community timeshare. Strazzinski’s work as an artist and maker is defined by her desire to understand and investigate systems of information and human behavior. She explores, deconstructs, and critiques various aspects of herself along with societal expectations, and preconceived notions of art and its institutions. Photography is at the core of her work, but she takes a create-by-any-means-possible approach to making that results in artist books, writing, collage, and installation.
