Ashley Inguanta, October 2011

An Interview with Writer Ashley Inguanta
Photo by Sarah N. Rogers

Ashley Inguanta is a Florida-based writer and photographer, and she earned her MFA from the University of Central Florida in 2011. Most recently, her photography has appeared in make/shift magazine. Ashley is also a steady contributing artist for SmokeLong Quarterly.

Her writing has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, Elephant Journal, Gone Lawn, and Sweet: A Literary Confection, among other journals. This year, Ashley earned an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train for their Very Short Fiction Award, and she was nominated as UCF’s choice for the AWP Intro Journals Award in fiction.

Ashley is also part of Burrow Press’s story cycle 15 Views of Orlando, which will be published this year. Keep up to date with her publications and travels here: ashleyinguanta.wordpress.com.

Redivider: How would you describe your art?

Ashley Inguanta: This is a tough question. My immediate reaction was to say “feminine,” but that doesn’t feel right. I think my art is constantly striving to achieve balance between strength and softness. And sometimes strength is softness. And my art is constantly growing, learning, trying to understand how to differentiate between this is and is not. Most of all, though, my art is a living, breathing being who is just trying to connect with others. So my art is social, a bit extroverted, but also introspective and self reliant. My art is like a best friend who gives me the strength to do what I cannot do on my own.

R: How/why did you become interested in photography?

AI: I’ve loved the idea of photography for a long time. I was a very shy kid, so getting behind the camera to observe and feel and connect intrigued me. But I didn’t start pursuing photography until 2008, when I was working as a copy editor/reporter at the University of Central Florida’s newspaper, The Central Florida Future. My assignment was to interview Margot and the Nucelar So & So’s, but hours before the show, water leaked onto the photo editor’s camera and broke it. So I photographed the show with my point and shoot.

Photographing Margot brought me into this new space; I felt connected in a way I never had before, and I knew I had to switch my track to photojournalism. Soon, I became involved with a warm, welcoming network of Central Florida photographers.

R: How long have you been doing photography?

AI: Since 2008, which was also the year started exploring different regions of the U.S. I think photography helped me feel brave enough to start traveling.

R: Is there a concept or a theme behind your art, or does each piece tell a different story?
AI: While I do treat each photograph as a separate life and a separate story, I do believe landscape unifies my art, both landscape of the body and landscape of the Earth.

R: Do you hold exhibits?

AI: I’ve never held an exhibit of my own, but this winter The Writing Disorder is doing a feature on my photography. Also, for the past two years, I’ve been participating in the Pink Art exhibit, which is displayed at Orlando’s CityArts Factory. PinkArt focuses on raising breast cancer awareness, and is run by the University of Central Florida’s Women’s Studies department.

Over the past three years it’s been me and my camera, and we’ve been exploring Florida and traveling around America whenever we can, gathering information, letting our findings compost. It’s about time I’ve put together an exhibit. I honestly don’t know what’s stopping me.

R: Do you incorporate your photographs into fiction and/or poetry when you write?

AI: Actually, “Inside” [which appears in issue 30 of SmokeLong Quarterly] is the only story of my own I’ve paired a photograph with for publication. I think my photography has a strong presence in my writing, though, in terms of sensory detail and landscape. Landscape tends to be an important character in nearly everything I write.

R: Your Web site mentions an experimental fiction collection called Wires and Light. What makes this experimental?

AI: Interludes of prose poetry propel Wires and Light from section to section, and that’s where most of the experimentation comes in. This collection isn’t published yet, but I hope to find a home for it soon.

R: What methods and media do you prefer to use? Do you edit your photos?

AI: I try to be connected, not attached to, everything and everyone I photograph. And in that connection, for me, comes the option to edit (or not to edit). I love to explore how a photograph can change after it’s taken in terms of color, softness. Sometimes a photograph just needs to be left alone, though, and I do respect that. I try my hardest to listen to the photographs I take, not just “see” them.

R: Where do you find inspiration?

AI: This planet is an artist, and She inspires me to understand emotion through  photography. Specifically the emotion of landscape, and you can find landscape almost everywhere: Earth has a landscape to it and we, humans, also have a physical landscape. The photos I’ve published here focus on that human landscape, the shapes and emotions that make us.

Just a little over a week ago, I was on an overnight train from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, and when the sun rose, everything felt so right, so in place–the peach sky above, the cake-layer mountains and canyons below. I’ve been photographing almost nothing but Earthly landscape here, hoping to learn more about boundaries and identity by doing so (where the flat land ends and the mountain begins, where the trees end and sky begins, how water knows exactly where to go).

R: What are your thoughts on current art trends? Is there a kind of art that you admire the most?

AI: In terms of technique, I’ve always admired art that has a fearless grasp of negative space, because that’s always been a challenge for me. In a more abstract way, though, I admire art that’s so comfortable in its own skin, it becomes a separate, powerful life force. I admire art I can have a conversation with, art that I can live in for a while.

Just last week I was exploring the Sumner & Dene Gallery in downtown Albuquerque, and one painting in particular stood out to me: Michael Norviel’s “Woman in 431.” I listened to this piece for a good long time, and there was something very maternal about the woman in the painting, the landscape of her bare body, the strength she held in her solidarity. She helped me picture myself, about 10 years older, as a mother, feeling content with the home I’ve built. Seeing that growth and change in my own life through one particular painting, now that’s what I call a gift. That is the type of art I admire.