KALON: The Call of Beauty
Collage Exhibition by Ashley Edes
August—September 2025 /
Chestnut Street Lofts Gallery
21 Chestnut Street, Portland, ME /
Exhibition Statement
In KALON, artist Ashley Edes presents a deeply personal retrospective—her first exhibition in Maine. Featuring early analog collages alongside newer works, the show traces a creative lineage across time and geography, anchored by one enduring inquiry: How do we stay human, present, and awake in a world that often overwhelms us?
The title, KALON, comes from the ancient Greek word for beauty, rooted in kalein, meaning “to call.” For Edes, beauty is not ornamental—it is a call to attention, a force that invites response. Her collages are devotional objects in this sense: layered, textural worlds assembled from fragments of print media, myth, and memory. They resist perfection in favor of presence, and treat beauty not as escapism but as a portal into deeper relationship with self, others, and the earth.
As the artist writes, “Beauty is how we stay soft when it would be easier to harden. It lives in grief as much as joy, in care, in ritual, in the quiet dignity of being.” KALON is not about idealized forms but about aliveness—the radical insistence that tenderness, courage, and truth still matter. It asks us to remember that we were made not just to survive, but to connect, to create, and to love.
About the Artist
Ashley Edes is a visual ensemblist—an artist, curator, and archivist who “re-myths” media through analog collage. Influenced by feminism, eroticism, and earth-based spirituality, her work unravels dominant narratives and reassembles them into kaleidoscopic visions of the sacred. Using found materials, she excavates subconscious realms to reveal forgotten, suppressed, or yet-to-be-imagined ways of being.
Her work has been featured in publications such as HYENA, brutjournal and Seeding Consciousness, and exhibited at venues including Pen + Brush, La MaMa Galleria, Superchief Gallery, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and during Miami Art Week. She has shown alongside artists such as Swoon, Betsy Damon, and Penny Slinger. Based in Maine, she is currently developing a tarot deck and continues to elevate women and gender-expansive creators through her company, FATA Productions.
“If we consciously fuel our joy, if we put our attention on the world's beauty, we will have far more strength and stamina to show up to the world's pain."
— Andrea Gibson
