Ashley Harding

Artist Bio:

Ashley Harding is a Visual Arts major with a concentration in Digital Media. She is a 22 year old artist from Long Island, New York. She has been creating art with the intention of finding a career in digital art/ graphic design since her freshman year of high school.  Her style of art has been greatly influenced by her personal life journey and passion for increasing awareness and understanding about the experiences/struggles people face as well as illustrating different perspectives about life.  Ashley enjoys all mediums of art in the forms of, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, photography and especially digital art.  However, her favorite mediums include digital art, 3D art, and code art. In addition to being an art student, Ashley is also a captain and member of the Union Women’s Golf Team. After graduating from Union, Ashley is planning on enrolling in graduate school for her MFA in Graphic Design/Visual Communications where her artistic journey and skills will continue to grow.

Artist Statement:

The condition of NOS/PDD, or Not Otherwise Specified Pervasive Developmental Disorder, is a diagnosis applied to children or adults who are on the autism spectrum but do not fully meet the criteria for another such autistic disorder ASD or Asperger syndrome. The causes of PDD-NOS are still unknown but there is the belief through the medical community that the disability is genetic or biological and directly affects the brain function while biological mechanisms remain unclear.

I have learned a great deal about this condition through my research online and experience in real life. I feel that it is important to explore and spread awareness about this rarely talked about disorder and the perspectives of those who are diagnosed with PDD-NOS. Through exploring this new perspective, I hope to convey a greater and more personal understanding of this condition as well as express the emotions and personal impacts that this condition has for those diagnosed.

Through my work I also hope to illustrate what the disorder may look and or feel like to those who are diagnosed. I wish to bring awareness of the social, mental, emotional, and internal struggles that some of these people may be experiencing. This is a very important and personal topic to me as my brother is diagnosed with PDD-NOS and continually faces many different challenges regarding this condition. This experience has greatly impacted me emotionally and mentally, allowing for my creative thinking process to highlight the importance of perspective, emotions and mental processes that are directly affected by disorders such as PDD-NOS. I believe it is extremely important to understand and continue to recognize that people could be dealing with more than we know and may even see the world from an entirely different point of view.