Hailing from Salt Lake City Utah, Thomas Ashman now lives and works in the magical town of Taos, NM, and is a book binder, doll maker, and mixed media artist who likes to create with one foot in the light and one foot firmly in the dark. Reveling in the irony of juxtaposition, Thomas starts with forgotten toys, discarded dolls, rusty metal, and other resurrected materials, then breathes a new and interesting life into these abandoned objects by transforming them into macabre story-tellers and unexpectedly complex studies of the literary characters and supernatural deities that inspire him. The haunting images adorning the covers of his glass and metal journals give his work a kind of classical darkness that conjures a spooky and ‘old-fashioned’ aesthetic.

Coming from an academic background with a degree in English literature and music, his visual art explorations began back in the early 2000’s, and have allowed him to travel all over the country to teach his original “no-sew” metal book binding technique, and other workshops, at local shops and national retreats such as Artfest, Art & Soul, Art Unraveled, Create, Art Continuum, et.al. Thomas exhibits locally whenever he can, and has had his work published in Cloth, Paper, Scissors, and Somerset Studio magazines, and has received a few awards in juried exhibitions.

When he isn’t in the studio, Thomas enjoys camping, kayaking, reading, educational podcasts, horror movies, live music, and banging his head and his drums, as often as possible (with a particular affection for classic heavy metal skullduggery). Thomas also loves just hanging out in his his 100+ year old adobe abode, eating NM red chile (yes, I said, “RED!”), baking cookies, growing flowers and vegetables, and watching true crime shows with his four favorite ladies. Leighanna, Lily, Peetie, Jessicat, and Thomas all get along pretty well, and luckily, are all politely tolerated by an ornery ol’ gato gordo named Hairy B.