about

Ashley Berkman is a multimedia artist in the truest sense of the word. She is a performer, visual artist, designer, installation artist, educator, video editor, photographer, amateur puppeteer, prop maker, and kids entertainer - and she is constantly exploring new forms of expression. Her work often explores themes of communication using language, humour, and/or physicality and physical environments to inspire and engage. Working in a wide variety of disciplines, she seeks to make connections between them. As an educator, she loves to help students push their work to the next level. As a children’s entertainer she loves teaching kids self-love and self-trust through mindful movement, play, and a whole lot of silliness. 

If given the opportunity she will eagerly discuss her Holy Trinity of favourite movies - Jurassic Park (the original), Sister Act, and Mrs. Doubtfire. She has lived in South Africa, ridden a bicycle across the United States, worked at Disneyworld, and while she shares a birthday with both Anna Wintour and Roseanne, she is considerably friendlier than both of them. 

Artist Statement

When I was in the third grade, my elementary school hosted a spirit week. Each day was assigned a specific theme, the most exciting of which was “Crazy Hat Day”. This was a huge deal as on any other day hats were strictly forbidden on school grounds.  While other children seized the opportunity to don caps with the emblem of a favorite sports team or the face of a beloved animated character,  I insisted on wearing a hat of my own creation.

I emptied the contents of my Lego bucket - red, square, and molded in chunky plastic - collected fern fronds from the landscaped areas of our housing development, and proceeded to meticulously scotch tape the fronds to each side of the bucket. I placed this construction upon my head, and using the rectangular handle of the bucket as a makeshift chin strap,  I walked to school.  I wore it like this all day, compensating for its heft and the visibility challenges it presented by slightly tilting my chin towards the sky. I embraced the discomfort of an angular shape against a round head as the necessary condition of being one with such a masterpiece. 

I was not awarded third place in the Crazy Hat Day contest. I was not awarded second place in the Crazy Hat Day contest. I did not place at all in the Crazy Hat Day contest. Which I, at the tender age of nine, knew was complete BULLSHIT. No other student had shown the slightest initiative to design their own hat. It was as if the judges neglected the word “Crazy” in the very description of the day. The highlight, however, was that I got to shamelessly wear my sculpture on my head all day long on the single day of the year that it was allowed - and that was all that really mattered.

This was the same year that I would be banned from using the watercolors in my classroom after my commitment to a Jacques Cousteau inspired painting of deep sea aquatic life resulted in the destruction of my new orange turtleneck and an enduring stain on the industrial carpet. This was the same year I almost died when, while in the hospital with double pneumonia, my lungs collapsed laughing hysterically at a dog on America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Over twenty years later my creative practice has not changed. It’s messy, exploratory, I work with whatever is around me, and my sense of humor and aesthetic remain distinctly my own.