Steve

Steve Ashby
I met Steve Ashby in 1972 doing a project for Chuck Perdue’s folklore class.
Ashby's house
Steve lived here, in Delaplane Virginia.
“Steve Ashby lived his entire life in a small town in Virginia, an unincorporated community roughly fifty miles west of Washington, DC. The son of an emancipated slave, he was the second of twelve children. Outside of a brief stint as a restaurant waiter, Ashby spent most of his life working the soil as a farmer and gardener until he retired in 1950. Although he had tinkered with small-scale wooden sculptures throughout his life, it was only after the death of his wife in 1960 that he started to experiment with figural sculptures.–National Gallery of Art
Steve told me he’d dream things at night, wake up and carve them in the morning.

Ashby creation
I don’t remember seeing a TV in Steve’s house, but somewhere he must have run into Donny and Marie Osmond.

final page
Chuck Perdue let me make scrapbooks.

Author: WmX

I stumbled off the track to success in 1968, started chasing shadows that summer. Since then, In addition to farm-laborer and newspaper photographer my occupational incarnations include dishwasher, janitor, retail photo clerk, plumber, HVAC repairman, auto mechanic, CAT scan technologist, computer worker and politico (whatever it takes to buy a camera.) I am on the road to understanding black and white photography.