Well hello there!
My name is Ashley Clarke. I’m the real live human meatbag behind Toothcrab Studio! I create colourful, hand-painted wood jewellery and other artwork, with a high value on authenticity, imperfection, and colour.
I had a stretch of stress and insanity where I did grad school while also working multiple jobs and dealing with my complicated life. I’d always planned on doing a PhD once I’d finished my Master’s, but after all that? Uff da, no thanks.
Feels like the world is on fire, and I just wanna make things and do some nonsense and paint my way to doomsday.
So, a shift in focus to Toothcrab Studio, where I explore my own ideas and creativity however I want.
I’m happiest as a creator among things that are strange, surreal, and absurd. I find inspiration in art history (especially Dada, Fluxus, and Pop Art), cartoons, broken objects, and unsettling media. Inside my brain, 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. It misfires and explodes on a whim, so my days are highly unpredictable. Some days I can do stuff and think, but other days, my brain is full of socks and I’m bad at existence. I’m dynamically and invisibly disabled, which is a fancy way of saying my brain and body are at odds with each other and with reality, and neither one of them thinks to loop me in.
I game, I read, I do garden stuff, and I’ve been an art educator for a long time. I’ve had the same bff since I was 13, and she is literally my favourite human being to have ever existed. I’m obsessed with cats. My own cat is the best cat, but all cats are good cats.
I’m pretty friendly, so come say hi!
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. Toothcrab is absurdity and just running with things, even if (especially if!) they don’t make much sense.
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.