Ashley Smith
The Geometry of Beauty and Folding Circles
Discover the circle — expansive, whole, and full of unlimited possibility for seeing anew as pattern, beauty, and connection emerge in your hands. Known as wholemovement™, sequential and proportional folding of a paper circle guides the process — naturally leading to folding and joining multiple circles, using the same principles. This reveals patterns found throughout nature, beginning with the sphere. Accessible to everyone, this embodied practice invites noticing, reflecting, and wondering — stimulating personal and collective creative expression, new neural pathways, and enlivened group dynamics. Participants take away unexpected insight and a process for continued exploration, resource materials, and models made with paper circles.
The Ring That Moves Through Its Own Center
Powered by circles and your own hands, this is a paper sculptural ring that responds to your hands as much as it moves them. Using a method called wholemovement™, Ash guides you through folding and joining paper circles to form a moveable ring, exploring how pattern, structure, and motion work together. The process invites play, discovery, and personalization — paint it, collage it, or draw on it, whatever inspires you. The result is a Torus Ring that's uniquely yours and a repeatable process to keep exploring on your own or share with others.
Folding Circles into Books
Using a method she calls circle-folding, Ash guides you through folding, sewing and gluing a one-of-a kind book using paper circles — a fresh, tactile, and embracing alternative to the standard notebook. Because a Circlebook is circular, it doesn't behave like an ordinary book — there's no fixed front or back, no blank first page waiting to be filled. Fill your unique book with words, images, memories — whatever inspires you. The result is a book that's beautiful, whatever it holds — and a repeatable process to keep exploring on your own.
These programs are available to ALL groups.
Approaches addressed are Social Emotional learning (SEL), Critical thinking, Building collaboration and community skills, Embodied learning, Culturally responsive teaching, STEAM, Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), Studio Habits of Mind, Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) and Discipline Based Arts Education (DBAE)
About AshAsh Smith explores the beauty and complexity of wholeness expressed in nature and life by folding paper circles — proportionally and sequentially — to reveal pattern and form. The practice — wholemovement™ — began with her father, Bradford Hansen-Smith, and she continues his exploration through her own folding, teaching, and experimentation. A lifelong passion for fibre and textiles, making things, and creative collaboration led Ash to design for theatre. Her experience as a professional costume designer (MFA, Northwestern University) alongside her personal practice of yoga and mindfulness shapes a teaching style rooted in presence and belonging. Ash invites curiosity and discovery through circle-folding, a hands-on process for seeing anew — each circle tells its own story, one that is unique to each person who folds it. She teaches throughout the greater Portland area, working with people of all ages and life experiences. Ash lives in the Pacific Northwest with four generations of family, folding and noticing circles wherever she goes.
Artist Statement
My work begins with a circle and a single fold. From that simple whole movement, form and space emerge that mirror the rhythmic patterns of growth found throughout life — from seed pods, cellular structures, and root systems to handmade textiles, architecture and spiritual systems across cultures. The circle’s inherent geometry was discovered by my father, Bradford Hansen-Smith, whose 35 years of folding circles revealed how the circle reflects the organization of the living world — my practice extends that inquiry into the tactile and the felt.
I begin with the same foundational triangular net that emerges every time a circle is folded, sequentially and proportionally — and from there, I fold, join, felt, dye, stitch — following what the circle is showing me. Working primarily with paper, fibre, and textiles I bring the skills of a longtime costume designer into this practice — the art of making an idea visible, of giving physical form to something felt but not yet seen. What is revealed is both process and artifact: the visible trace of movement and relationship becoming structural form.
I fold circles to see anew — this practice shows me that plants, creatures, and the planet itself move together in shifting patterns that change, reform, and remain whole all at once. The physical process of folding and connecting many circles re-members me into belonging — that belonging is unconditional — a visceral expression of interconnection. How do we belong within ourselves? How might we extend that belonging to re-member one another and other beings on this ever-changing planet?
