Meet Ash
My name is Ashley Clarke. I’m the real live human meatbag behind Toothcrab Studio! I like to create stuff that’s vivid and a little chaotic, be it original artwork, illustrated nostalgia, or hand-painted wood jewellery. My favourite colour is pink, followed by all of them at the same time.
I find inspiration in art history (especially Dada, Fluxus, and Pop Art), cartoons, broken objects, and unsettling media. Inside my head, I’m hanging out in some kinda maximalist liminal space that runs on cartoon logic.
Creativity lets me deal with bad brain days that come from a ridiculously miscalibrated central nervous system that is out to get me. Some days I can do stuff and think, but other days, my skull is full of socks and I’m bad at existence. I’m dynamically disabled, which means that my mind and body are at odds with each other, and neither one thinks to loop me in.
Outside of making stuff, I hoover books, wallow in horror, frown at politics, and befriend all of the neighbourhood cats.
Why “Toothcrab”?
Toothcrab comes from a dental emergency years ago, when I began drawing broken teeth over and over in a creative haze. One of those teeth wandered off, picked up some crab parts, and here we are.
Chief Everything Officer
Ravioli is my boss, studio bestie, resident HR manager, quality assurance professional, HBIC, passage chaperone, and interrupter extraordinaire.
He is a mercurial drama queen, but also the bestest goodest sweetest kindest gentle lovey-dovey boy (except at the vet, where he is a spicy demon with murder in his heart). As a rescue kitty who was saved when he was a tiny baby, he was bottle-fed by his foster mama, and has grown up to be extremely people-oriented. His name is a pasta, but he is actually named after a movie character, not the food.
He’s an excellent timekeeper, making sure that we always eat together at the table and that I exit my studio (or get my butt back in there) when need be.
Ravioli plays a critical role in the studio, sniffing everything to make sure it’s good to go, splashing paint water everywhere to remind me to clean up, and losing his dang little mind if an enemy cat is around. Without him in my space, painting would surely go quicker, but the time spent would be entirely less enjoyable.