Profiles of a Roothbert: Ashley Minner Jones, ‘06
“I identify as an artist first,” Ashley Minner Jones told me during a recent conversation, “and my art includes my scholarship.” Ashley, who was a Roothbert Fellow in 2006, is a community-based artist in Baltimore, Maryland, and an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Her work spans a number of media, including artist books, prints, mixed media drawings, and installations. She also works as an Assistant Curator for History and Culture at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. She received a PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland, and an MFA in Community Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Over the past several years, much of Ashley’s work as a visual artist, scholar, and public historian has centered on Baltimore’s American Indian community. In 2021, she launched a project that chronicles the history and heritage of East Baltimore’s historic American Indian ‘reservation’ throughout the 20th century. The project includes an illustrated print guide to the reservation, as well as a mobile walking tour app. Recently, the project published an exhibition of photographs, sourced from several archives, of people who were part of this community in the second half of the 20th century. “With this exhibition,” the curator’s statement reads, “we hope to preserve and honor the memories of Baltimore’s American Indian community as it once was by showcasing our people on the scene, in the fullness of our humanity, with our many complexities.” Ashley is also working on a book, which builds upon her PhD dissertation, about the history of this community.
At the NMAI, Ashley recently facilitated the acquisition of several pieces from The Monument Quilt, which is a project of the Baltimore-based survivor collective FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture. The quilt is a collection of over 3,000 stories, created by survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence, which have been written, painted, and stitched onto panels of red fabric. The pieces acquired by the Smithsonian relate to a 2015 protest around the Dollar General Co. v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Supreme Court case, which raised vital questions about tribal sovereignty. To mark the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women on May 5th, the museum plans to publish social media posts about the acquisition. Next year, Ashley hopes to organize a pop-up exhibition to display the pieces.
As a community-based artist, Ashley’s work is at the intersection of visual art and public history. “I think that [art and public history] can give people a sense of efficacy,” she told me during our conversation. Through public history, “they are able to contextualize their experiences. Using the tools of both these fields, you can help people understand why things are the way they are, and feel empowered to change things, or celebrate things.”
Through her work, Ashley also endeavors to highlight our fundamental interconnectedness. “In Western society,” she noted, “we tend to gravitate toward rugged individualism. That’s harmful for a lot of reasons. We all need to be reminded that we are born into community.” Indeed, in her artistic statement she writes, “In my artwork and in my life’s work, I am most inspired by the beauty of everyday people. I’m interested in making obvious both our humanity and our divinity, as well as the fact that we are all related.” Moreover, becoming a mother has helped her to see the beauty in all people. “Having a baby,” she told me, makes you “see everybody as what they were when they were born, and understand how wonderfully made we are, and how precious everybody is.”
When she isn’t working, Ashley loves to spend time with her family, listen to old music, and travel. She also has an adorable pet turtle named Leadbelly, whom she got on a 10th grade field trip over two decades ago. During the pandemic, she told me, Leadbelly “all of the sudden decided he’s a dog. He wants to be let in and let out. He wants to be held, he likes to snuggle. He has a big personality.” You can find a number of photos of Leadbelly on Ashley’s instagram (@ashleyminnerart).
Although her most recent projects have been largely digital and research-based, Ashley misses making things with her hands, and hopes to return to studio art soon. For anyone trying to create their own sustainable artistic practices, Ashley recommends the book Making Your Life as an Artist, which was written by her friend Andrew Simonet and can be accessed through Artists U.
To learn more about Ashley and her work, please visit ashleyminnerart.com.