Open Heart is an ongoing project that explores the subject of love in contemporary art and life. This first issue was released in May of 2010 and is made up of work from fifteen contributors. It is 64 pages full color offset, 9.5 x 13 inches in an edition of 250.

Contributors include: David Horvitz, Aliza Rood, Elinor Carucci, Hope Hilton, Denise Schatz, Alain de Botton, Sam Gould, Tammy Rae Carland, Leif Hedendal, Cecilia de Jong, Lisa Ciccarello, Oliver of the Sky, Jim Verburg, Mark Clintberg, and Berit Noergaard.

Associate Editor: Sam Lansky | Graphic Design: Nicole Lavelle

To buy a copy of Open Heart from me directly click the purchase button below. Cost is $26.50 in the US, this includes media mail shipping via usps. If you live outside of the US please email me to purchase a copy. **Please note that issues are shipped 1-2 times a month by a dear friend of mine in Portland, Oregon**

Open Heart is also available at Nationale and Reading Frenzy in Portland, Oregon and Motto in Berlin, Germany.

image: joy mckinney

All of my intimate relationships have been shaped by specific songs. A life long connection to music and song lyrics has inspired me to record and produce a cover album that speaks to my closest relationships. This album, Heart of Gold, is also a tribute to the songwriters who wrote the songs I am covering. Their songs have helped me connect with myself and those around me in deep and meaningful ways. Heart of Gold is an expression of the importance of songs in my life and relationships.

Several years ago I got the idea to make a cover album. Since then I have taken lessons infrequently and sporadically worked on this project. It has remained unfinished because of insecurities about my voice. In January 2010, I turned 30 and decided to step out of my comfort zone and finish the album. The process of learning to sing has reminded me why I wanted to make Heart of Gold in the first place: to honor the role music has played in my relationships and to pay tribute to the song writers who have shaped my experiences.

Currently this album is in progress. Inital recording began in June 2010 in Berlin, Germany.

This past winter I dated someone for a few months. I think we both knew from the start it wouldn't really go anywhere. I already had plans to live in Berlin for six months, then I'd be heading off to Canada to lead an artist residency - our ending was inevitable. Endings are often bittersweet and this one was particularly painful because I was grieving the loss of my previous relationship as well. For a few weeks I struggled to get out of bed, go to yoga class, feed myself, or reach out to my friends. During this time I turned to music which I often do. Music has a way of helping me reconnect to myself. I began this series of drawings based on the songs I was listening to during this difficult time. Working on these simple drawings and posting them on my blog was theraputic. Many of the drawings were "liked" on my blog or re-blogged and this encouragement gave me the strength to start practicing self-care in other areas of my life. I am grateful to have a healthy outlet for my pain and that I am willing to put it out into the world on many levels. This series of drawings is 20 in total.

The text on each hand painted sign is from a song that reminds me of each of my family members.

Father: Heart Of Gold, Neil Young, Mother: Fix You, Coldplay, Brother: Abigail, Belle Of Kilronan, The Magnetic Fields.

Photographs were taken in Atlanta, GA, December 2009.

Last summer Canadian arist Paul Butler invited me to participate in the project Art Moves. Each invited artist had to email someone of their choosing to describe a work of art that made a significant impact on them. I chose to ask my mother as way to connect with her, learn something new about her life, and bring her voice in to my art practice. Emails were reproduced as serigraph prints in a mono edition and exhibited outside of various locations in Toronto, Ontario. Art Moves was part of the twently-four hour art festival Nuit Blanche.

Participants inlucded: AA Bronson, Aganetha Dyck, Dave Dyment, Guy Maddin, Kirsten Stoltmann, Kitty Scott, and Richard Boulet among others.

In 2009 I was invited by Cecilia de Jong Jespersen to facilitate Getting Closer Everyday in Copenhagen at Koh-i-noor. Interested parties were encouraged to pay attention to and appreciate our existence by writing a list of what they were grateful for and sharing it with their community by hanging it up on the gallery wall. This project provided the framework to create a collective, meaningful look at what each of us has to be grateful for. My intention was for the participants and gallery visitors to find value of taking note of the beauty and wonder in our everyday lives.

This project was funded by the Danish Arts Council.

Click here for an interview with Cecilia.

Check back soon for a PDF book of the gratitude lists.

Collective Awakening is a series of text-based posters that speak to my desire to reach out to others. In The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh declares that individuals can spark a change in consciousness. By introducing life affirming messages into the public sphere Collective Awakening attempts to remind people that all we have is this moment, that we are precious, and that we are all in this together.

This project was part of the exhibition, BaseCamp at TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary, Alberta.

Exhibition text by Scott Rogers:

Based in Portland, Oregon Ashley Neese produces artwork exploring the notion that artists can–and should–use their work to positively enhance the lives of others. For her project Collective Awakening Neese will be working with the Alberta Printmakers Society to produce six silk-screened posters (each in a run of 75) which will be stacked in the gallery and distributed throughout the city in shop windows, on telephone poles, and in other public sites. The texts on each of these posters are intended as affirmations and encouragements to the people of Calgary; personalized messages that the artist shares publicly. For Neese this act is intended to affect a shift in consciousness, reminding individuals of their value and importance, and promoting a sense of cooperation within the city.

Posters from top R to bottom L read: Be Here Now, You Are Okay and You Make A Difference.

When my brother was deployed for the second time I gave him a small handmade journal to take with him. During his deployment he mentioned that he liked the journal but was quickly running out of room to write. When he came back stateside briefly last summer, we went on a 6 day road trip through many of the Southwestern and Southeastern states. On the last day of our trip I gave him his second handmade journal pictured above. Since I knew his third deployment was for a year I made the book with 365 pages.

Every once in a while I get a chance to connect with him and he is writing almost everyday.

atlanta, ga

This project is a re-enactment of a film done by American artist Ginny Kleker in 2004. In the original piece Ginny shot a Super-8 movie of her step-father on a carousel in California. See the original on Ginny's website.

I decided to re-enact this piece with my father for two reasons. One was because I was invited to contribute a new work to a book about Ginny. She died in 2008 and artist Lori Gordon is making a book about her life and work. The second reason was because I wanted a chance to spend some time with my father. We live on opposite sides of the country so we do not see each other often. Thinking about Ginny’s short life made me aware once again of the fragility and impermanence of things and made the time spent with my father that much more rewarding.

photographs by joy mckinney

Spring of 2009 I got a message from a college friend and amazing photographer Joy Mckinney. She has been working on a documentrary project where she photographs creative women doing their creative work. Since we live on opposite sides of the country and she could not just swing by my office and photograph me there we discussed other options. It happened that I was going to be in Atlanta for a week so we decided she would photograph me doing a public writing project in my old neighborhood. This worked well because I am not really a studio artist and often create ephemeral projects out in the world. I thought it would be interesting to work with Joy because her photographs are beautiful and I am comfortable with her. There are not many people I would like to have document these intimate projects.

We met in Little Five Points one afternoon and she documented my creative process. From writing the signs, to hanging them up, it was fun. The signs I made read "you remind me of home" and "you are not alone". The first phrase was about being back in my hometown and exploring what that felt like. All of those signs I hung up or left in places I spent years in or around. Criminal Records, Wax N Facts, Elmyr. The other sign was about how I felt when I was living there. I have so many wonderful and lonely memories of growing up. This text was meant as an offering to myself back then, a way to heal and a way to help others feel someone else in this area understands.

At the end of our adventure I felt good about the project and was grateful to have had an opportunity to work with Joy.

During a studio visit in graduate school Matthew Higgs suggested I read the book I Remember by Joe Brainard. This book had a tremendous impact on my life and practice at the time. Over the years it has remained a book that I turn to for inspiration. In the spirit of I Remember I began writing down lists of words and writing my personal memories to those words. This has slowly become a glossary of my entire life. I have been working on this project off and on for the last two years and will continue to do so for the rest of my life, publishing parts of it along the way.

portland, or

Last fall I participated in Reverse Pedagogy at the Banff Centre. During this month long residency I had a lot of time to think about my recent break up. My partener and I decided it was time to move on a couple of weeks before the residency began. I was very depressed. It seemed that my life was falling apart and I felt like a train wreck. I couldn't get out of bed, I stopped eating and meditating. I moved to Portland for this relationsip and the fact that it wasn't working out the way I hoped it would broke my heart. I had never loved anyone as much as I loved him.

I had no plans when I arrived in Banff, well I had plans, I submitted a proposal six months prior to create a publication about the residency but that was the last thing on my mind when I got to the center. I was afraid and the first week all I did was hide out in my studio and send out proposals. When I wasn't working on my career I was in my room crying. I had traveled several times in the last thirteen months but this was the first time I really missed being home, being with Josef. Sometime during the end of my first week I decided to create something based on my wanting to get back togeher. I knew that I was going to need to do something major to get the relationship back for example, changing some old behaviors I learned as a kid that were not serving me well. I decided to declare my feelings in public, specifically in our neighborhood. I took advantage of the screenprinting facilities and set to work on a series of posters that I hoped would get the point across. The plan was to plaster our neighborhood with them (I printed several hundred) when I returned to Portland, however, given the snow storm and all of the rain I decided to wait until Spring.

Now it is March and I have started hanging the posters up in our neighborhood. We are not getting back together and that is OK. Much has happend in the last four months and I realize now this is for the best, for both of us. All of those feelings I dealt with last fall were a catalyst for this work. They helped me dive into printing, something I hadn't been doing in recent years. It was theraputic to print day in and day out last November and I am still seeing the benefits of that focused studio time.

This project has become bigger than Josef and I. Going for walks and putting up these posters has helped relieve some of the lonliness I feel. By bringing these messages out into the city I hope that people read them and smile. Whether they know our story or not does not matter. Maybe they will inspire people to think about their relationships. Maybe they will cause people to stop for a second and reconnect with the present moment. All I know right now is that it makes me feel good to share these with my neighbors and that is enough to keep me going.

family from sunnyvale, ca

Getting Closer Everyday is a book, an exchange and an invitation. As a result of making gratitude lists often my outlook on life and connection to people, places and things has greatly improved. I want to share this useful tool with others and encourage interested parties to start their own gratitude practice. In exchange for a handmade gratitude book, participants will write on-the-spot gratitude lists that will be scanned and made into a publication.

On June 6 I exchanged 62 books for gratitude lists in San Jose, California with the Infinite Exchange Gallery. This experience was more eye-opening and rewarding than I imagined possible. The wonderful conversations I had and the people that participated were truly amazing.

Download the digital book of this project here.

top right : katrina, tuey, chris + amy

Six years ago I drove to Hilton Head beach in South Carolina with the intent of letting go of qualities that had held me back my entire life. I was twenty-two and at a point in my life where I wanted to live free and believed if I took simple actions I could achieve that freedom. It was also at that time I became acutely aware that there was a larger force in the universe, a force that was bigger than I could imagine and a force I learned years later came from within me and every living thing on this earth.

I didn’t grow up near the ocean, but I’d been going to see some ocean or another since before I can remember. Every time I walked on the sand up to the water I closed my eyes and felt the energy of the magnificent force of nature. Everything made sense.

After a series of events it became clear to me I needed to let go of what had been holding me back. At that time it was mainly fear, regret, jealously and procrastination. I had no clue where to begin. How exactly do I let go of regret? I asked a friend that one afternoon and she suggested I go to the beach, write down what I wanted to let go of in the sand and watch the waves wash it away. I heard her. I was off to South Carolina.

I would love to report that since writing in the sand that day at Hilton Head I have never experienced regret or fear or anything but joy. That hasn’t been the case. That day at the beach marked the beginning of a lifetime journey of trying something new. I have come to accept that I will probably always have a little bit of fear and regret but if I don't take steps toward freedom I will never feel free.

Over the years I have created a ritual out of writing in the sand and letting something more powerful than I can even imagine begin to change my attitude and perception about whatever it is I am holding onto - whatever it is that is keeping me from growing.

Since this practice has changed me in positive ways over the years, it is my desire to share the process with others.

tre + i circa 1983 + 2008

My fourth grade teacher, Ms. DeBra, had us write letters to soldiers in Desert Storm. I forgot about this until a few years ago, until my brother became a Marine Corps officer and it became clear he would at some point go to war. Thinking of You is not about political affiliations or the war. It is about setting beliefs aside and sending a hello to a young person far away doing a very difficult job. I am very close with my brother. When I found out that everyone in his situation does not receive mail during his or her tour it made me sad. After much research, I discovered it was difficult to send mail to soldiers. I got a call from my brother while he was half way through his last leg of training before deployment. I told him my ideas about letter writing and giving the public a place to do so. He was interested and said he would be happy to serve as the point person in mail distribution. Thinking of You gives interested parties the opportunity to write a letter to my brother’s Marine Corps Platoon stationed in Rawah, Iraq from September 2007 through May 2008.

My brother’s name is Alonzo Neese III. He is a First Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, Infantry. He is the Platoon Commander of 54 Marines. He is 24 years old.

During his deployment over 100 letters were sent to his platoon.

**This project was part of the show reconnectUS in Providence, RI and Fall Rivers, MA.

atlanta, ga + brooklyn, ny + san francisco, ca

Signs is about self-care, humanness and the desire for connection to community. This series can be preformed anywhere. I can go any place and let people know somebody else in the world cares enough to stand outside and say it. The best parts about being out with a sign are the brief conversations with strangers or exchanging a smile or a thank you. Many times in my life I have needed a gentle reminder that I am not alone and that everything really is ok. Instead of waiting for that comfort and reassurance I am giving it to the world, a community, a passerby and to myself.

I have held signs in San Francisco, Atlanta, Portland, Brooklyn, NY for the Conflux Festival and for Open Engagement: Art After Aeshetic Distance in Regina, Canada.

Image text: Your Existence Gives Me Hope, You Are Okay, I Believe In You, You're Just What I Needed

Image credits : Stevie Brown (GA) Ahndraya Parlato (NY) Darcie Edgemon (CA)

Sometime in 2006 a friend and I decided that we wanted to create stencils and spray paint them on the sidewalks of our San Francisco neighborhood. We were constantly talking about love and art, trying to figure out ways to bring our voices into our community. At one point we talked about starting a love-art collective which I regret we never did. Over the course of a year we spray painted messages about love on sidewalks in the Mission District. We went out late at night and had the best time.

After a month or so out stencils were being talked about by a lot of people. We started noticing them on blogs, in drawings, in fact one of mine from this series was just part of a little blurb about positive street art in the Huffington Post last week (August 2010)! The majority of the feedback we received was positive. I remember stenciling one night and three people walked up to us. Initally I was afraid we were busted but one person said, "Oh! You are the ones making these amazing stencils!" He went on to tell us how much he and his friends enjoyed them. But there were also the haters. Sometimes our stencils would be crossed out, stenciled on top with a steaming pile of shit (this always made me laugh, the fact that someone went to all the trouble to cut a stencil of a steaming pile of shit and spraypaint it on top - how could I be anything but amused and flattered?). The funny thing was people were always coming up to me, especially from grad school, saying they saw my new project. That made me happy. I was nice to know that I was actually buidling a body of work and that it was recognized.

When I moved to Portland I stopped stenciling. The sidewalks were very clean and it did not feel right to spray paint them.

6th + Market Streets, San Francisco, CA

A couple of months ago I got an email from my friend Sean asking me if I would be interested in making a flag to hang out of his friends apartment window on Sixth Street. He said he had a flag hanging and I should check it out. I biked over there one afternoon and saw his flag. It looked good so I decided I would make one. One evening Sean and I went to the apartment where I met the man who lived there, Kottie Paloma. We all talked for a while. I spent time looking out the window on to the street thinking about what my flag would say. I had already decided it would say something I just wasn't sure what I wanted it to say. As I looked out the window I got sad. Anyone who has ever been in this part on the city knows why. A few weeks went by. During those weeks I was falling in love like I never imagined possible. I had a few exhibition openings. My friend Hope was in town from New York. Josef came from Portland. The weather was nice. I was happier and happier each day. I wanted to write a message of love for Sixth Street. So I did. I don't know if it will change anything. If people will look at it and know someone cares. I cannot afford to be stingy with my love. I have so much love in my life and I want to give it away. This flag will remain up for the month of August.

I sat near the 19th street BART station on Broadway between 19th and 20th streets (across from SEARS) holding this sign for 5 days during the middle of June. I documented this experience with a tape recorder, a camera and pen and paper. I talked to approximately 75 people. hey oakland what's love? was then turned into a zine. The 1st edition of 50 was printed on July 6 2006 and was part of the show come on over! at RPSin Oakland.

Last week I was in rare form and decided to place a personal ad on Craigslist with the photo pictured to the right. The title of the posting was "bored...anyone want to go for a bike ride?" and the subject read "or take me shopping?". In one day I received over 150 responses. I couldn't believe how many bored people were living in the Bay Area. Many men offered to take me shopping. And lots of them wanted to ride bikes. I saved all of the pictures that were sent and spent many hours looking through them. I spent many additional hours bluring their faces in photoshop then creating a photo gallery of the collection. After a few weeks of trying to figure out what to do with the images I have decided not to show them. It didn't feel right. I never told them I was going to use their pictures. All in all the test failed. Despite my grand total of 298 responses, I am still left with me. Instead of writing any of them back I baked and apple pie and hung out with girlfriends. And in the end I felt good about myself.

As a way to cope with my feelings after Nick and I broke up I made signs to hold in public places. My original idea was to hold a sign in a specific place for 45 minutes on the same day every week for eight weeks. I did this twice. With the same sign. The second time I had my friend, Jack Decker, document it for me. This sign reads "since you been gone i can breathe for the first time", taken directly from the Kelly Clarkson song, the same one I lipsync to months later in my bedroom. This project was scary for me. I have never put myself out there in this way. People stared at me. Threw money. Asked me "what did he do to me to make me do this?". Smiled. Said "thank you". Waved. Ignored me. Laughed. Told me I made their day, week, and month. It felt good to let the world see me. It felt good to show the world my pain as a way to heal. And I did heal. It worked. The pain didn't consume me like it once did. I felt lighter. And fifteen dollars richer.

Image: Jack Decker, San Francisco, California.

During the last two years I have become increasingly aware of my parents' mortality as well as my brother's and my own. As a child I thought my parents would be 33 years of age forever. I have noticed their aging and in turn noticed my own. My brother, though younger than I, has chosen a career where his life is on the line, thus making his life seemingly more in jepordy. This awareness has made me afraid that my family will die and not know how much they mean to me.

I want them to know.

I created a specific list for my mother, father, and brother expressing my fears, wishes, apologies, and thoughts surrounding our individual relationships. By reading these lists, outloud, in private, they will be more likely to hear my words as I intend them. It is my hope that by speaking as if they were me, they will feel more connected to me and our relationships will be richer. Living a life without regrets is something I want for myself. I don't ever want to say "I wish I had told them" or "I wish I had said....".

I want them to know.

**Thank you to everyone that has written me about this project and has created their own versions with their families. You all have shown me that this work is truly important and I am eternally grateful.

Since I finished graduate school in May of 2005 (with the exception of turning in my thesis) I have had a terrible time looking for a job. To date (October 19, 2005) I applied for 35 jobs. I applyied for everything. Resturants, non-profits, admin, teaching jobs, and retail stores. In September I dropped off my resume at American Apparel on Haight Street. A week and half later I was called in for an Interview. While meeting with two store managers I noticed the girl who took my resume wrote on the top "cute gal". After answering a few questions about the companys ad campaign and an embarrassing photo op they told me my resume and photo would be sent to L.A. and the people there would review me. I was a little scared. I wondered if the L.A. people would think I was cool enough to represent their company. I left the interview thinking everything went alright. However, I spent the next week wondering if I should have worn a different outfit. They said they'd contact me soon. After a few weeks and a phone call from me, I never heard anything from them. I wondered why I didn't get hired. I have had a ton of retail experience. I am ambitious. Hardworking. The only thing I could think of was that I didn't look the part. I decided to find a photographer to do a mock American Apparel photo shoot with me so I could prove to myself I could and do look the part. I put a posting on Craigslist and found Joshua LaCunha. He took some photographs at my apartment in October 2005.

After spending some time with this project I felt it lacking. It was a fun gesture and people liked it but it seemed I could take it further. I started shooting the project myself. Things really changed. It became funnier and smarter and I felt more confident about it. For the last five years I have continued to shoot these American Girl photos with my old digital camera. I have thousands now and in the summer of 2010 I will edit them down into a magazine which I will eventaully mail to Dov Charney.

This project is set to go to print in the Winter of 2010. Jen Delos Reyes will be contributing an essay for the printed project and a solo exhibition of a select group of images will be shown at Stumptown Roasters on SW 3rd Street in Portland, Oregon in March 2011.

if i just eat them i won't have to think about them | megan mccready | 2005

free money release #2 | sal randolph | 2007

Through human understanding and coexistence, lies the ability to know oneself and to know others in a deeper way. With all of this work in the exhibitions, there is no interest in changing public opinion or agenda, but instead to dismantle certain perceptions about the art market and in turn a gift economy. These works are about the everyday, the mundane, and the complex notion of generosity.

You Can Have It All is occurring at a time when many artists are making objects and creating services that are given freely. They do not require a fee, nor is there an expectation of reciprocity. Instead, these artists are trying to find a way of creating community, and indirectly, long lasting relationships with the receiver. Much like the gaia hypothesis, these artists hope to create a change within their own community that will then ripple out, creating far reaching effects that penetrate beyond their local territories.

-Lori Gordon and Ashley Neese

This project was exhibited at the PlaySpace Gallery in San Francisco (2005) and the Salvation Gallery in New York (2007).

For more information please visit the site, You Can Have It All.

Nick was the first boyfriend I ever lived with. After being together for a few months he moved in with me. Over time I became interested in trying to document our relationship in an intimate way. At first I took photographs of him napping. We had different schedules, so many times I would get home from school and he would be napping on the couch. Something was missing in the images. He was pretty when he slept and I liked looking at him, but I wasn't capturing us. I was just a lover taking photographs of their lover. I didn't get any sense of our home. I wanted to put myself in the photographs. I figured the best way was to take the phototogarphs while we were both sleeping. I tried to fake a nap next to him a few times and it was dumb. I took the first photographs of the two fo us at his parents house in Los Angeles over Christmas of 2003. I loved how they turned out so I kept doing the same thing for the next year. Nick would always give me a hard time at night when I was setting up the tripod, but I think secretly he enjoyed it.

My first few months in San Francsico I was very lonely. I missed everything and had trouble finding my place in this new city. I needed someone to talk to so I decided to write the singer of one of my favorite bands, Death Cab For Cutie. During those months they released their fourth album Transatlanticism. I felt as if all of the lyrics on that album were written about my life. Listening to the album over and over was one of the only comforts I had. I wrote the singer, Benjamin Gibbard, and told him all about my life. My relationships, my fears, my struggles, my joys. It felt good to get it out on paper. I never spent a lot of time wondering if he got them and if he ever read them. I felt like reaching out to someone I admired. And I did. After writing 12 letters I decided to stop. My life was getting better, I no longer felt the need for connection the way I did during the prior months. I took all of the letters and made a CD of myself speaking them. This proved to be a more effective way to let an audience in. In addition, I sold 10 copies of the CD on Ebay during the Spring of 2004.

"Ashley Neese's work reconstructs a series of letters written by the artist to musician Benjamin Gibbard. Neese unabashedly embraces the effects of media culture as her most powerful influence and uses her letters to document her very real fanaticism. She has constructed a deep relationship through fantasy, idealism, and anonymity - yet the emotions she feels for this celebrity figure are perhaps more "real" than any experience in her everyday life. Neese's letters are intensly personal and profound, but they reveal something beyond her own life experience to uncover a phenomenon in our culture. They present us with evidence of the mass media as a system that structures our humanity and fandom as a new kind of human relationship."
                                 -Megan Lillie, from the catalogue This Is The Future, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2004.

When I moved to San Francisco I had recently broken up with a boyfriend. I was lonely. I was afraid. I thought the best thing to do would be to get another boyfriend as soon as possible. I am shy. I have trouble being up front. I made little cards and passed them out to guys I met on the bus, the street, at shows that I was attracted to. It was much easier than saying "hello". On one side I put fragments of song lyrics I was listening to at the time that had to do with relationships. On the other side I put my email address. A couple of the guys wrote me, more or less to find out if this was some religious thing or to tell me they liked the song. I went out for coffee with one guy and it wasn't what I imagined. After two months I stopped passing out the cards and went to Los Angeles for the first time.

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