Ashley Hollan is a multijurisdictional attorney with a focus on media and civil rights law, research-based installation artist, critical theorist, poet, storyteller, educator, and activist. She earned her BA in Public Policy and Visual Art/Art History at Duke University, attended law at the University of Denver and graduated from Pacific Northwest College of Art (now Willamette University) with her MFA in Visual Studies and MA in Critical Studies. She also completed Music Business MBA coursework with Berklee College of Music/SNHU, studied art with SACI Italy and studied tropical ecology in Costa Rica with the Duke Talent Identification Program. In 2024, she was admitted to attend the LLM in Indigenous Peoples Law program at the University of Oklahoma and serves as a Visiting Professor of Arts Administration at Elon University. Ashley has been invited to teach, speak, and produce panels at myriad universities and entertainment, academic, legal, and business conferences . Her writing has been published in formal bar association periodicals, academic commentaries and pop culture publications and she has been a part of legal and production teams crafting groundbreaking movies, music, and visual art content.
LAW
Ashley worked as a litigator in spaces such as public criminal defense with clients facing charges up to and including murder, with penalties up to and including life without parole; as an attorney for international law firm King & Spalding, LLP; and as General Counsel and Vice President for multiple private companies in media and recreation. She owned a law firm with a focus on entertainment law and criminal defense before joining Live Nation, where she served first as an Artist Rights Consultant and then as Associate Counsel supporting the Legal, Productions, and Media and Sponsorship divisions. She now consults on entertainment, cannabis and Adtech business and law matters and on civil rights policies. Her nonprofit and leadership roles include award-winning service with the American Bar Association, including as an author, Co-Chair of the Young Lawyers Division Committee on the Entertainment and Sports Industries and Vice-Chair of Committees and she has served with Volunteer Lawyers and Professionals for the Arts in Tennessee and Georgia and the National Association of Record Industry Professionals, among other organizations.
ART
Ashley’s creative work explores where art and music, philosophy and politics, history and law, and ecology and healing merge, spotlighting connections to catalyze transformation. Her highly meditative, process-based studio practice creates conversation through levitated atmospheres. Creating affect through enchanting, insidious and trancelike environments, and always implicating the viewer, she ignites awareness through layered movement, light, and sound. With unexpected materials, she advocates for causes, creatures and spirit realms, and her studio and creative writing practices are deeply influenced by her legal and theoretical work. Ashley’s current body of work, /ˈpro͞oviNG ˌɡround[s]/, consists of critical multimedia investigations compelling discovery at the crossroads between personal experience, history of law and place and radical storytelling. Pieces from her recent ALTARed and DISINFECTED series were chosen as juried selections for the 2021 UVA Artworks Northwest Biennial her recent residencies and collaborations include art and writing at Caldera Arts Center in Sisters, Oregon, sound art at Campbient in Lakebay, Washington, metalsmithing at Ignite in Asheville, North Carolina, an installation build at Love Burn on Virginia Key, Florida and an independent study with
The Alternative Art School and Artist Membership with ecoartspace. Her [mutual] aid the forest installation was exhibited in 2024 at the Elon University Arts Faculty Biennial Show.