ABOUT ASHI

(Top left) Life-size casket & flag covered with cigarette boxes, lined with sewn foil box linings. (Top right & bottom) Uncle Sam with Bic lighter and pack of Winston in hands.

(Bottom left) At 1976 NYC Bicentennial Street Fair - sign reads, “If We Save the Boxes.”

John Ono Lennon - 1980-1 Lennon Light Lennon Light “Christ it Ain’t Easy....”

Sketch for life-size.

Dawn - Remembering Scott - Life-size bronze on Faux wood bench. Clay face above (left top).

Ashi & Sheri foot massage in Liquid Flyer Sandy Floating above water Two of Six LF Configurations

While simultaneously completing his writing projects, it is Ashi’s greatest wish now to finally sculpt full time - creating life-size and monument figures that have something to say about healing humanity. He believes he is capable of creating some of the finest NeoRomantic sculpture in the world. With the support of his wife Sheri, Ashi is out to creatively win the commissions needed to bring these projects from artistic dreams into realized, universally appealing works of art.

“I’m looking for wise, Saint-Patron investors – people with heart and vision, wise enough to realize the potential benefits of partnering in the ownership of sculptures I can now produce, while giving the world universal, timeless, and meaningful art. Works designed to inspire the healing of humanity for hundreds or thousands of years to come. I invite you to join me.”

ASHI ON ART

As a NeoRomantic contemporary artist, my main artistic mentors were my grandfather Zady, August Rodin, and John Ono Lennon. Zady for teaching me to trust that I could create anything I wish. Rodin for his Romantic style sculpting, and Lennon for the spirit of art:

“The only truth you have is your own experience.”

-John Ono Lennon

The music of the 1960s - 70s was also my soul’s inspiration, because most of it was truly NeoRomantic Art - most of it had something significant and healing to say.

The Proud Grandfather (Zady) Bronze Zady The Thinker - Rodin Dawning by Ashi

“Day in the Life of a Superstar” - Sketch for a life-size of all in bronze. Photo from Abbey Road

Dhyan

Photo Gallery of Ashi and Family 1994 - Present

As a Cancer, Cancer, Gemini, Ashi is true to his nature - with feelings being his most passionate characteristic, while his Gemini loves to combine art and science, to make his statements about humanity as holistic and universally appealing as possible.

Born Jeffrey Olshan, on July 16, 1947, in Brooklyn New York, Ashi was the third son of the failing marriage of Sylvia and Abraham Olshan. When his parents divorced in 1954, Ashi turned to using creative art as an outlet to express his deepest emotions in a positive, constructive way.

“I credit art for saving my life, and humor for saving my spirit.”

(Head above) is “Childhood Pains Yield Adulthood Gains.”Eric Stewart, Ashi’s nephew, age 10, model. 1977

(Figure sequence above) “Clouds Got in Our Way.” Portrait of Ashi’s fading six years of marriage. 1976

Throughout the years from elementary school on, Ashi won awards for his art - also winning him acceptance into the music class at George Gershwin Junior High and into High School of Art and Design, NYC - where he studied to be an architect. He was the first student in his elementary school to ever win both the art and math awards, “The Leonardo in me,” he explains. And like Leonardo da Vinci, Ashi is also an inventor with over a dozen non patented and one patented inventions to his credit. His latest invention, “Liquid Flyer - Flexi Underwater Raft,” is the world’s first convertible underwater raft; US Patent 9,469,388. This uniquely versatile raft is for: Meditation, Relaxation, Recreation, Exercise, and life-saving - with seven advantages over the conventional ring buoy & life jacket life savers. The raft was originally designed to accompany Ashi’s published book, Meditations in Water:

dozens of smaller sculptures – mostly NeoRomantic in nature - with his sculpture titled Inspiration landing in the Clinton White House in 1998.

Ashi also developed several behavior modification programs:

• Resolutions – Resolving Human Conflict

• Arts for Transformation – Prevention and Recovery Through Creativity

• The Divorce Enlightenment Course

• Meditations in Water

Over the years, he created and periodically teaches a class, Sculpt What You Feel. Unable to afford the high costs of mold making needed to preserve his impermanent (soft clay) works, Ashi inadvertently became a master mold maker, which he also teaches and now uses to help supplement his income. His primary income from his True Construction Company was lost after the crash of 2008.

“I call myself a NeoRomantic artist,

because what I express through my art

expresses what I feel in my heart.”

And when his pieces are not about his own personal experience, then they are about the inspiration he gets from others. Or they are provokative statements about our human condition - like his anti smoking piece in 1976 titled, IF We Save the Boxes, first shown at NYC’s Bicentennial Street Fair. It won First Prize for Ideal Toys’ staff art show in 1976 - where Ashi worked full time as one of the four staff sculptors for the biggest toy company in the world – at that time.

For this reason, Ashi’s art has never won him any patrons or government grants, because it is too personal, provocative or real, at a time that non threatening American Abstract expressionism and folk art seems to be the present trend.

Some of Ashi’s original work is also about discovery of new techniques. For example, the art form he created and named Mirrorage (TM), employs a special mirror used in his sculpture titled Insight (below). With the use of special mirror, he has created the illusion of two full size heads where there is only two half heads. When hung on the wall, the frame passes as a built in niche, embedded into the wall. This is just one of a variety of methods he employs to make things appear to be what they are not.

Insight - Look within. Then look without, without distraction from within.” Jack Kornfield, model.