BIO:

Clayton specializes in making media-based installations and digital-video works. These range across films, illusions, and zines, all with an underlying sense of absurdity. His work is driven by the experiences he had being raised as a devout Presbyterian in the south. Growing up in such an environment, he always had a feeling that someone was watching him. As an artist, he became interested in exploring the psychological power of observation, and how modern technology is changing the ways that vision is created and utilized. Clayton maintains an active practice today, striving to use humorous means to address serious issues.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Power of discipline is held over me; guilt and paranoia mold my behavior and thought. That power comes from within myself, instilled there by my pastor, ever-present surveillance cameras, and by the people I encounter every day. If God is omnipotent, modern surveillance technology is trying its best to play God. My work is an attempt to disrupt the blanket of observation. Maybe I can create a world apart where I might be able to hide from all the watchers for a few minutes. As I return from isolation, the discomfort of being surveilled allows reconsideration of my experiences and the pressures and powers at work in it. I seek connections with you, the viewer, via personal recollections of memory within a shared viewing context. From this I can explore methods for extending the ways that sharing my experience layers filters of meaning into it. The viewer plays interpreter to my expressions through assumptions and politics. My history, my actions, become the object of surveillance and judgment.