Award: Research & Development Grant

Discipline: Multidisciplinary Arts

Project Collaborator(s): Delisa Myles, Dancer and Photographer

Earl Duque, Farmer

Molly Beverly, Head Chef

Rebecca Davis, Sculptors

Roger Asay, Sculptor 

City/Town: Prescott

Year: 2019

Artist Website:

When we grow wild, colorful, or endemic varieties of foods, when we share them at potlucks, plant and harvest them with children, and gather around these foods at a table, it begins a conversation. Such practices are a delicious reminder that diversity is our greatest strength, and that preserving knowledge, heritage, genetics, and stories really matters.

Excerpt from Ashley Fine’s R&D Grant application

Ashley Fine will bring artists, farmers, and chefs together, in collaboration, to create a site specific, farm-to-table performance. The event, titled rhizeHOME, will be a multidimensional harvest celebration that will take place in September 2019 on a historic, one-acre urban farm, in the heart of Prescott, AZ. She envisions a roving, interactive performance that travels through the property’s garden beds, greenhouse, orchard, farmhouse, barn, and natural sculpture gardens. The performance will culminate with a large, open air, family-style dinner utilizing food grown at the farm.

The collaborators∕artists will research the biology, mythology, origins, and cultivation of various edible plants, including local food staples such as corn, beans, and squash as they seek to uncover stories that are both regional and deeply personal, and which illuminate the co-evolutionary relationship of humans and plants. The final performance will bring to light these stories of reciprocity and nourishment, and will be a celebration of people, place, food and origins. The performance, meal, and visual art installations will be a harvest of months of labor, crop tending, and artistic collaboration.

Excerpt from Intimacy with Disappearance
Dancers/Co-choreographers: Mizu Desierto, Ashley Fine, Jayne Lee, Delisa Myles, Sedona Ortega, and Breanna Rogers .
Videographer: Stephen Miller, STUDIOm13
Sound: Lisa DeGrace, STUDIOm13
Date: March, 2018

Ashley Fine is a performing artist, choreographer and dance teacher, as well as a mother, gardener, and full-time school teacher. Ashley has choreographed several shows for theater companies including Prescott Center for the Arts and the Elks Opera House Foundation. She has been a featured artist at workshops and dance intensives including Kono Arts Camp in Santa Barbara, CA, and Learning to Fly Summer Dance Intensive in Prescott, AZ. She has performed on stage, at artists’ salons, in site specific performances, and in festivals, such as, Playa Presents, Breaking Ground Dance Festival (Tiny Dances), Acker Music Festival, Tsunami on the Square, Flagstaff Dance Festival, and the American College Dance Festival. Ashley has also danced and collaborated with a variety of artists and performing companies such as Ævium, STUDIOm13, Water in the Desert, Verbobala, Nemcatacoa, The Carpet Bag Brigade, Tamara Albatis, Center Dance Ensemble, Human Nature Dance Theater, and the Mills College Repertory Dance Company.