The Creator has a plan for everything, according to artist Wayne Ashley. Sometimes, those plans don’t reveal themselves for years. Back around 2006, Ashley says he did some tile work for Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz.
The Creator has a plan for everything, according to artist Wayne Ashley. Sometimes, those plans don’t reveal themselves for years.
Back around 2006, Ashley says he did some tile work for Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz. It involved replacing a lot of water-damaged tile, which Katz let Ashley salvage. The 80-some-pound slabs of travertine have sat outside Ashley’s home at Alexander First Nation ever since.
But when Ashley heard about hurricane Sandy and the havoc it wrought upon New York City – home to a massive stone monument he created in 2009 – he realized what he had to do with those tiles.
Ashley is now getting ready to donate another massive stone monument to New York City in order to promote a fundraiser he’s organizing for victims of the hurricane.
“I believe in my life that things are put on a path, and sometimes (that path) is not revealed for years,” he says. “From these (water) damaged ruins will rise humanity and hope.”
Ashley, 46, is a former tile worker who has constructed many large stone tile monuments in Alberta. One of them, entitled Ascending, is in the Holy Cross Cemetery just outside of St. Albert.
So far he’s done all his work for free.
“I do it because of my daughter,” he explains – whenever he asks her if he should sell or give his works away, she tells him to do the right thing.
In 2009, Ashley spent six months finishing a truck-sized tile mosaic called The First Law of World Peace, dedicated to the victims of 9/11. But when he hauled it to New York in hopes of donating it to the city, he learned that city council could not accept it due to bureaucratic reasons.
That’s when New Yorker Pete Castellaneta says he saw Ashley sitting outside of city hall with the mosaic in the back of his truck.
“He was basically stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Castellaneta said.
Castellaneta agreed to temporarily host the work until it could find a permanent home. (It’s now on display at a funeral home that held many services for victims of 9/11.) The two became friends and stayed in regular contact.
After the hurricane hit, Ashley called Castellaneta to see if he was OK.
“I told him that the extent of the devastation was much more than I had seen anywhere in my life,” Castellaneta said.
A security consultant with the City of New York, Castellaneta is now one of the hundreds of volunteers working to help New Yorkers clean up after the hurricane.
“Every day, I see more and more destruction,” he said.
The storm smashed trees and put streets three metres underwater.
“Whole neighbourhoods are washed away.”
About 40,000 people are thought to be in need of housing, according to the New York Times, and some 150,000 are still without power. Total damage has been pegged at around $50 billion, making it the second-most costly storm in American history after hurricane Katrina.
The army, Red Cross and other agencies are already full up on food and clothes, he said, but basics such as cleaning supplies and building materials are still scarce.
“There’re so many things that people need.”
A foundation of hope
After their talk, Castellaneta said Ashley came up with an idea for a fundraiser.
“He always wants to help,” Castellaneta said.
Ashley is now working with Edmonton’s Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples to collect funds for hurricane relief in New York. He hasn’t worked out the full details of the fundraiser, he said, but it will likely ask residents to donate cash or gift cards to the church that will be then sent to needy New Yorkers.
He also plans to donate his latest work, entitled Humanity, to the city. Meant to be shown alongside his earlier donated work, it’s a door-sized two-panel piece made of different shades of stone tile.
The piece depicts humanity’s relationship with the Creator, Ashley explained. Humans pray in sweat lodges, shown as stone arches in the work, and those prayers are heard by the Creator, represented by two large eagles above the lodges, one flying towards the sun and the other towards the moon (male and female icons, respectively).
“As you look out of the sweat, you can see steps,” he said.
The spirits of the departed ascend these rocky steps and pray before a bonsai-esque Tree of Life, he says, before departing for the afterlife, represented by distant teepees.
The piece is meant to get people thinking about their actions, Ashley said. Whether you believe in the afterlife or not, he argues, it’s your obligation to make the world a better place.
“Better yourself to better the community around you so that when you do pass and meet the Creator, he’ll see (your efforts) and he’ll know,” he said.
The base of this work will be made from the water-damaged tiles from Katz’s house, to show New Yorkers that we can rebuild from wreckage.
“We can build a foundation of humanity with that and make it unmoveable,” Ashley said.
This donation will show New Yorkers that the world cares about what happened on the east coast, Castellaneta said.
“That statue, coming from another country, I think would give a lot of people here that are out of their homes and feeling pretty bad, a glimmer of hope,” he said.
Details on Ashley’s fundraiser will be available from the Sacred Heart Church later this month. The Red Cross is also accepting donations for hurricane victims.
