Keeping Trees: A Solo Exhibition by Ashton Ludden
- Aug 14
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 28
September 4 – October 23, 2026 | Dogwood Gallery
Dogwood Arts is pleased to present Keeping Trees, a solo exhibition by Knoxville artist, educator, and community builder, Ashton Ludden, on view September 4th through October 23rd in the Dogwood Gallery.
Keeping Trees explores Ludden’s grief and love for the towering trees recently removed from her neighborhood due to growth and development. Through intimate works on paper, she considers the loss of these familiar giants—and her lack of control over their disappearance—while also celebrating the quiet, often unseen role trees play in our lives.
The exhibition ultimately moves beyond loss toward hope. Visitors will have opportunities to share stories of trees and participate in a tree adoption event with Trees Knoxville during the October 2nd First Friday reception.
Keeping Trees invites us to consider what we lose when trees disappear—and what we can do to remember, protect, and celebrate the ones that remain.
Ludden is an artist, educator, and community builder whose practice spans printmaking, drawing, hand-engraving, and hand-lettering. She is also the founder and director of Relay Ridge, a collaborative artist space in North Knoxville that provides affordable studio space, a gallery, and a community printshop.
Click Here for her full bio.
Learn more about Ashton and her work at ashtonludden.com.
Visit the Exhibition
Dogwood Gallery: 123 W. Jackson Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902
First Friday Receptions:
September 4 | 5–8 PM
October 2 | 5–8 PM — featuring a tree adoption event with Trees Knoxville
Regular Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 10 AM–5 PM
First Friday at Dogwood Arts is part of the Downtown Knoxville Art Walk, offering visitors a chance to explore galleries, studios, shops, restaurants, and creative spaces throughout downtown. The event is free and open to the public.
We've had the opportunity to work with Ashton across several programs at Dogwood Arts over the years: including the Dogwood Regional Exhibition and Artists in Classrooms initiative. She is also a regular maker at Maker Exchange, where Knoxville audiences can find and collect her work.
2022 Dogwood Regional Exhibition
Work for sale at Maker Exchange
About the Artist:
Ashton Ludden lives and works in Knoxville, TN as an artist, educator, and community builder. She has a BFA in Engraving Arts & Printmaking from Emporia State University and a MFA in Printmaking from the University of Tennessee. Ludden specializes in the traditional crafts of wood and metal hand-engraving, printmaking, drawing, and hand-lettering/sign painting.
Ludden is the founder, director, and an active artist member at Relay Ridge, a collaborative artist space in north Knoxville. Since 2020, this unique studio space offers her fellow artists with opportunities to affordable studios, a formal and flexible gallery space, and a community printshop with access to other printmakers, printmaking equipment, and print education through workshops.
She is enthusiastic about sharing her artistic processes and has taught in various capacities outside of her studio practice. In addition to CSA, Ludden also teaches at TN Governor’s School for the Arts, Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, John C. Campbell Folk School, Relay Ridge, and recently taught at the University of Tennessee in spring 2024. She was the 2D Artist Coordinator for the Pentaculum Artist Residency (both winter and spring) at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts from 2016-2024.
When she’s not in her studio or tricking others into liking printmaking, you’ll likely find her tending and observing life in her yard, happily tucked deep in the Cumberland Plateau with her dog, or passionately advocating for trees.
See more of her work at https://ashtonludden.com/ or on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ashton_ludden/
Full Exhibition Statement:
Keeping Trees shares memories of towering trees recently removed from my neighborhood due to growth and development in Knoxville, Tennessee. These works on paper are my attempts at keeping trees and grappling with my lack of control over the demise of trees that I felt were mine too.
They were cut down for new homes, or maybe just a good investment, by new people and more people. They were simply in the way of the grid and growth. The process of capturing what remains resulted in quiet, intimate moments with each tree I knew. I used to run under these trees, protected by their shade from the unforgiving Tennessee summer sun. I noticed them often, and acknowledged their impressive selves showing off their seasonal outfits any time I ran, biked, or drove by. But then, my chest would cave in when I came up the hill to find only red clay and an open sky.
This library of trees was collected through gently rubbing graphite over their fresh fatal wound, pressing wet paper into their soon-to-be-gone ridges and furrows, or dedicating endless hours, weeks, months, even years of mental meditation in drawing a tree that I now am told will be gone next year.
Collaborating with trees taught me to reconsider my understanding of time. They questioned my experience of time and how our timelines connect with each other and everyone. How decades and decades are lost within one swift moment from a decision made by a few, yet affecting us all, for our and future lifetimes. The trees asked what is home? And where? And for who? And for how long? No matter the answer, we cannot not linger in loss, but we must celebrate our love and our need for these often unseen giants living alongside us, endlessly gifting us songs, shade, breath, and homes.
My wish is to share with you my stories, but also offer hope through connections to others who care as deeply about trees and to their generous knowledge and actions. I offer the saplings of the trees I love as a hopeful keepsake, to give them another chance with you and with the Earth, another chance to grow big, old, and tall.
Collectively, I hope this exhibition leaves you with a new consideration for trees, encourages fruitful conversations with our neighbors and our city, and ultimately, instills a sense of communal responsibility for keeping the trees.
