Jen Clay is a multimedia artist based in South Florida, She creates textiles and animations for performance and video works and installations. She received her Masters in Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Florida while also studying costume design and behavior analysis.
Clay researches encounters with the unknown which includes horror and science fiction movies and television shows, H.P. Lovecraft stories of cosmic madness, and actual accounts of hallucinations and supernatural sightings. This research informs her work from the performative sculptures and scene choices in video works to narrators speaking directly to the viewer. Clay’s practice includes claymation and stop motion animation and sewing wearable works to best depict otherness, the Other, the uncanny and the inhuman. A sense of childhood friendliness is seen in all of her work such as claymation with bright colors or the softness of sewn wearable works. This friendliness is meant to create an atmosphere of safety that is subverted through fast transitions to visceral hidden insides of the characters, the narrator’s use of double entendre, and during performance when the character gets dangerously obsessed with the audience.
Previously she was included in the Off Site Performance Series program of the Girls’ Club Collection to create a site specific performance. She has shown at the SuperFine Fair during Miami Basel with a micro theatre immersive installation that debuted Episode a 20 min short video work. Clay was voted “ Best Emerging Artist” for 2016 by the New Times of Broward and Palm Beach. In 2015 her short film, Schools ,was accepted into Visionaria in Milan, Italy. In 2018 Clay had a Solo exhibit at Practice gallery in Philadelphia and a installation and interactive room at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood.
