Clay Ellis | Flats, Tropes, Rondos

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Clay Ellis, "Holdings - Little Plume," 2022

mixed media, 24" x 24". Copyright the artist.

Opening reception November 24: 7-9 pm

“The cake is in the coffee tin marked tea,” one of my mother's lines, an example of depression era resourcefulness. Her habit of attaching a history (or sometimes a personality) to an object was entirely something else. Perhaps a result of knowing that every doorknob, latch, newel post, or banister in her childhood home was handmade by her father.

And it all looked handmade, the scale and feel of the objects was set by the tools on hand or the materials available, everything had that character, looking like it was from some other time or place, a constant reminder of his efforts. By necessity he was frugal but I have a feeling that his desire to fabricate (rather than buying cheap or used) was rooted in something else.

I seem to have inherited both afflictions . . . so I make all of the found objects I use. I fabricate a repertoire of images and forms, kept long enough to lose the preciousness of the newly made... either easily useable or disposable. While some stay connected to the spirit in which they were first realized, with the images used time and time again, others are in a constant state of refinement. Some are derived from process itself, with repetition or replication, certain marks become standards... riffs of sort.