Tour Mixed-Media Artist Ashley Johnson's Home and Studio in Winston-Salem, NC

Photographer Ashley Johnson works as a commercial photographer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, specializing in brand, food and lifestyle photography for clients. But it’s the work she does for herself that defines who she is. In her bio, she calls herself “a mixed-media artist by way of hand-crafted weavings, floral, woven and braided masks, and … a documentarian and photographer by way of life.

“I’ve always documented my life, my family, and the things around me. And then, I just started getting hired for small projects,” Ashley says. “And over time, it just turned into its own business — and its own life.”

Commercial photography, by necessity, is full of light that “creates a veneer that doesn’t really exist,” Ashley says. Her own work takes the opposite approach. “My own personal work began with a series that was mostly shadow, just dark.” Ashley says. "Southern Women in White Dogwoods" is one of many images of masks she has made using live florals and woven textiles. “Most of the larger bodies of work I’ve made are about big questions, usually about the world around me, as I’m experiencing it.

One powerful series was inspired by a dream. The series, Mark Yourself Safe, explores the topic of fear around Black men “and what alarms us to tell us that we’re either safe or unsafe,” Ashley explains. In the dream, “a bunch of Black boys were ripping off their clothes and running away from a group home and painting these Rorschach shapes on their backs.” In her photographs, dark-skinned men with their backs painted with shapes and slashes of bright orange are pictured in shadowy settings. “When it comes to Black men, especially as we were seeing so many police-related deaths, both seen and unseen, I was very curious about what invokes that fear. It's work that investigates the viewer.”

Ashley’s home in Winston-Salem is filled with her own work but also the work of other artists that she admires. A linework design by Utah multi-media artist Miriam Tribe commands attention on a living room wall. “I asked her for a community of people that were kind of emotive, leaning into each other, and, literally, the first sketch she did, I was like, that’s it, that’s the one,” Ashley says. “So I projected it onto my wall and then painted over it, and she did a really great job of calling in what l was looking for, which is people in community with one another.”

Her living room also showcases the work of North Carolina photographer Kennedi Carter, who, Ashley explains, became the youngest cover photographer for British Vogue when she was chosen to photograph Beyoncé for the magazine’s December 2020 issue. The large photograph that Ashley displays is of a young man with a horse. “She had a whole series of boys and men with horses, and she just did a really beautiful job of showcasing the dignity and beauty of Black men and Black folks.”

"When I see a really big portrait, or when I talk to an artist about their practice, I’m like, I want a part of that around me, and I want it big,” she laughs. Art by Danish contemporary artist Christiane Spangsberg commands a kitchen wall. “Most of the art in my house is really big.”

One of Ashley’s own photographs in the living room is a large image of two men, standing back-to-back, wearing symbolic masks that obscure their heads. The masks, titled “Poppa Said Girls Don’t Play with Guns,” are by Winston-Salem sculptor Lakea Shepard. “She makes these phenomenal masks, really powerful, powerful work,” Ashley says.

Meticulously crafted floral and woven masks make up a significant body of Ashley’s work, as well. In her studio, Ashley shows the photograph of her creation, "WOVEN." In an artist’s statement, she notes that the masks she creates and photographs are made “to navigate intra-racial conflict, identity evolution, generational impact, Southern femininity, and studies of relative time as it relates to African American/feminine beauty practice.”

Artistic touches stand out throughout all the rooms of Ashley’s home, an apartment built in the 1920s. In the small dining room, the built-in cabinets are a showcase for a changing selection of meaningful objects. The room had been advertised as a study, but she’d never had a dining room, “Never bought a dining room table or chairs, so I knew this had to be my first-ever dining room,” she says. “This built-in turns into whatever my world is like on that day. I choose things that are meaningful to me.”

“I love to host dinner parties,” Ashley says. Those gatherings are often casual. “But sometimes I like to set up an experience for my friends that’s a little bit more communal, functional and, most of all, beautiful.” The dining room is small, so at these times, she may set up an 8-foot folding table in the living room and bring a creative vibe to the act of setting the table, switching out the linens, dishes and glassware as the theme and mood suggest. “This is all about play, not being regimented, just being really playful,” Ashley says.

“Gathering has really shifted as the landscape of our world has shifted, so dinners don’t always happen around a table, and setting a table and doing it really intentionally and wonderfully is something that people really hunger for,” she believes. “And I like being the person that’s able to create that experience, and hoping that people take those experiences from my table into their own homes.”

All of the walls of the apartment were “yellow, and some interesting burnt orange, or something,” when she moved in, Ashley says. Most of the rooms now are clean, bright or soft white — except the bedroom, where she kept the warm shade of yellow that covered the walls. “I left this room because I want it to feel cozy. I liked how warm it made the room feel,” she says. Soft or crisp white is part of the palette, used in the bed coverings and on window frames, but the overall effect is warmth. “For my mind, I thought, what is the coziest I can feel in this room? I wanted to keep the yellow for that reason.”

In the bedroom, there’s also art, of course: large photographs of Ashley’s nieces caught in the process of having their hair braided. “It wasn’t supposed to be for art. It was actually just me taking photos when my sister came over and was doing their hair, and I wanted to take a picture while they were getting their hair done.”

It was a meaningful moment. “Growing up, our identity and sense of self-worth is based on the world that’s going on around you. And it’s specifically difficult for Black girls, because you can see so much of what you don’t have through the eyes of the world, which isn’t always made or fashioned for you,” she says. “What I have in my room are these really magnificent photos of my girls with their hair out the way that it grows. And what I wish I’d had for myself at that age was for someone to look at me and regard my natural beauty the way it is and be like, 'Damn, that’s really beautiful!' And that’s what I want my nieces to see.”

Ashley’s best friend and studio partner Corrie Beck’s art also finds a prominent place on the bedroom wall. The colorful acrylic on canvas abstract painting features fantastical, dynamic shapes. “I really love the style that she has … bizarre, but in the best way,” Ashley says. The painting sits atop a bureau that holds a variety of objects, including a small, framed picture of her mother as a young girl. Its significance is one of the central themes of Ashley’s art.

“A lot of my work covers generational passing of ideas and some of those ideas are rooted in, sometimes, self-hatred [that is] not necessarily given to us by each other but the circumstances of racial inequality,” Ashley says. In the small photo-portrait, her mother is a young girl. “She still has a kind of youthful exuberance to her, but this is a time before some of her most difficult times, which informed my most difficult times.”

Ashley’s interest in textiles in her fine art practice began with asking questions about her own identity, she says. “I started to think about hair as textile and my own hair being a central part of my identity. I employ some of the techniques that I do on my hair in some of my textiles, like crocheting, or braiding, or puffballs.”

One piece in her home that results from this theme is a large, wandering wall sculpture in a hallway, formed entirely with yarn pom-poms in shades of white, taupe, brown and gray that she made by hand. “This is something that’s big and fun and textural — it’s its own little beast,” she laughs.

Another facet of Ashley’s textile-based work is punch-needling (also known as rug-hooking). She makes cushions and other soft yarn pieces using the technique for Cool & Brown, a business that she shared with another artist that is currently on hiatus.

Watch the HGTV Handmade video Punch Needling 101 With Ashley Johnson to learn about punch-needling and make your own cushion that she says is “super cute, very original and unique to your home.”

Ashley is also a recipe developer. “My most favorite creative outlet is cooking. I love to cook,” she says. So it stands to reason that her kitchen deserves special attention. The room includes the original built-in glass-front cabinet, painted white. “One of the things I wanted to do to make it my own was to change the hardware out, so I found someone who makes these really beautiful handles,” she says, pointing out the tall, ropy gold-tone pulls that add interest to the cabinet doors. “I feel like it elevated the cabinet a little bit.”

The dishes on display include pieces that are second-hand or thrifted, “but also things that have a sort of artisanal quality that I like and admire” — especially since food styling and food photography are important in her commercial work.

Ashley’s favorite part of the house is the sunroom. “It’s where all of my photography happens because we have these sweeping windows,” she says, indicating the two walls of windows that allow bright, natural light to stream in. “It’s also up in the trees,” where birds and squirrels provide moments of joyful entertainment.

“Also the best part of this area is that it leads to the other favorite part of my house, which is my garden,” she says.

“I have three porches,” Ashley says. “The front porch is where I hang out, read, all that jazz. The back is where my garden has expanded.” The upper back porch is filled with tubs, pots and containers growing flowers, herbs, lettuce, “plenty of tomatoes, because it’s not summer without tomatoes,” she says. She recalls watching her grandmother enjoying sprouting plants. “Grandma would take a potato, sit it in water let it grow, and she would say, ‘I just like watching stuff grow.’ And I never understood that until I had my porch garden. You learn how your food grows.”

The lower porch contains more pots and raised planting beds with beans and kale, “all kinds of good, green things," Ashley says. “Each morning I come out here and just water everything, and it’s the most meditative thing in my day.”

Not all of Ashley’s plant-love is showered on her patio gardens. She also enjoys making beautiful floral arrangements using foraged material — “weeds, flowers, just things that you find outside," she says. She uses them to "build something that’s really pretty and cozy in your home that’s very unique. Something you don’t have to find at the flower store or grocery store. It’s something you make purely for yourself.”

Watch HGTV Handmade's Foraged Arrangements With Ashley Johnson to learn her tips and techniques for making beautiful arrangements with foraged plants and flowers.

Foraging and flower arranging are one of the ways Ashley maintains a sense of play. “In moments when I am having a lull in my art, or a lull in my photography practice, I think, 'What else can I put my hands on?'” Moving from a still space in life to a state of question or curiosity is key, she believes. “Curiosity is where play comes from,” she says. “And if you just follow those threads, you just end up in a state of play.”

Secondhand and thrifted items are given new life throughout Ashley’s home. Here, a batter bowl that she found at an antique mall becomes the container for an arrangement of foraged wildflowers and hydrangeas that she fashioned as a centerpiece for a dinner party.

“I love secondhand items,” Ashley says. “I think because they come with age, they come with soul.” She is drawn to items that are unique, she says. “Those items carry with them story or adventure. Using items that were made in different time periods, having a sense of age and experience and time to them, you have the opportunity to give it new life in your space and where you are in time.”

Follow Ashley on a thrifting trip in the HGTV Handmade video Thrifting in Winston-Salem with Ashley Johnson.

Away from her home space, Ashley shares a studio with another multi-faceted artist, Corrie Beck (whose large, untitled painting, is prominently displayed in Ashley’s bedroom). “I do a million and one different things, and so my space is a kind of hub of all of those things put together and also lovingly shared with my bestie, Corrie,” she says.

Ashley’s space in the studio is filled with everything she needs in her day-to-day work: the series of recipe cards she creates and sends to customers, tools and yarn for masks and weaving and for rug-hooking and tufted items for her business Cool & Brown (which is currently on hiatus), a wall of ideas for future projects, wrapping and packaging, and plenty of art books.

“Corrie and I love art books,” Ashley says. The books and the artists they represent serve as inspiration for colors and designs that she uses. “Mostly I like to see how artists use color.” One of her favorite artists is the late Black Expressionist painter Alma Thomas. “I just love her treatment of color, and a lot of her color has inspired some of my work,” Ashley says. The art books are also “a really great way to get to know an artist and their history while also ingesting their work.”