The Art Assignment

An assignment that I wrote "Lost Childhood Object" is featured in an episode of The Art Assignment on PBS Digital. I hope that you will watch and take part!

From The Art Assignment's website: "This week we visit Lenka Clayton, another Pittsburgh based artist whose work finds meaning in ordinary, everyday objects. For her assignment, she asks you to partner with someone and recreate a lost childhood object, using their memory of the object and the materials you have around you. Here are your instructions:

1. Ask someone to describe an object they made or cherished as a child. Make a mental image of that object
2. Create the object
3. Give the object back to the person (Ideally, you'd do this project in tandem)
4. Document and upload using #theartassignment
5. Fame and glory (your work might be in a future episode)"

Artist in Residence

I'm delighted to be the current Artist-in-Residence at the incredible Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. We'll be working together on a large scale project over the coming year. Follow @lenkaclaytonstudio to stay updated on our progress.

63 Objects - one of It's Nice That's books of the year

read full article here...

My five favourite books; an article for It's Nice That

Read article here

Awarded Carol R. Brown Award for Creative Achievement!

Carol R. Brown Creative Achievement Award video, by Emmai Alaquiva

I'm very honored to have been awarded a Carol R. Brown Award for Creative Achievement by the Pittsburgh Foundation. Filmmaker Emmai Alaquiva visited my studio and made this short piece for the award ceremony.

Studio Visit with Carnegie Museum of Art

A studio visit with Matt Newton from Carnegie Museum of Art... (read here)

Crystal Bridges - State of the Art

View fullsize

I'm delighted to announce that two recent works "63 Objects Taken from My Son's Mouth" and "The Distance I Can Be from My Son" will be included in the ambitious exhibition State of the Art; Discovering American Art Now opening this week at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas.

The exhibition's two curators; Don Bacigalupi and Chad Alligood, spent a year travel(l)ing around the US and made one thousand studio visits. I'm one of one hundred and two artists included in the show from all over the country. In November I will be at the museum to present my work and run workshops.

Carol R. Brown Award for Creative Achievement

I have been nominated as an emerging artist for a Carol R. Brown Award for Creative Achievement. 

Imagine Architecture

Repairing Lebanon is featured in Imagine Architecture; Artistic Visions of the Urban Realm, just published by Gestalten.

Confetti Stack featured on Designboom

The Last Billboard

A new work up on The Last Billboard. To view - look up at the corner of South Highland & Baum, Pittsburgh. Curated by Jon Rubin.

Two new works in "Seymour" CEAAC, Strasbourg

I will be showing two new works: Alphabetical Shopping, 2014 and Confetti Stack (a vertical stack of 18,180 paper confetti pieces) in the exhibition "Seymour" at the public art center CEAAC in Strasbourg, France. Also exhibiting are Erica Baum, Julien Crépieux, Moyra Davey, Joseph Grigely, Chitti Kasemkitvatana, Gareth Long, Benoît Maire, Benoît-Marie Moriceau, Antoinette Ohannessian, Bruno Persat, William Wegman and de Holden.

From the curators Élodie Royer & Yoann Gourmel:

Seymour is the second in a trilogy of connected exhibitions titled after the names of fictional characters from literature, three characters of "ageless" children: Rose, Seymour and Ernesto, respectively imagined by Gertrude Stein, J.D. Salinger, Marguerite Duras and their readers.

Despite, or perhaps thanks to, their young ages, these three characters define a relation to the world full of poetry, consternation, melancholy, humor, naivety sometimes but also sincerity, love, spirituality and permanent questioning of what we take for granted.

Within these "portrait-exhibitions", we are trying to look at these three characters as points of departure, as a raw material to approach them not in a documentary way, nor to pay special attention to childhood in itself, but to consider them as "conceptual characters" to discuss the work of the invited artists.

"Please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses : (((())))."

J.D. Salinger, Seymour : An Introduction, 1959

More info...

The images above show installation views of the whole show. My works Alphabetical Receipt and Confetti Stack are the first two depicted. Photos: R. Görgen.

Two new works in the Pittsburgh Biennial, 2014

I have two new sculptures in this years Pittsburgh Biennial at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts that both involve the mail service, in different ways. The exhibition opens on August 15th 2014 and runs until November 2, 2014 and is curated by Adam Welch.

 more here/soon...

New Shop!!

Please pop in to the brand new studio shop! Open daily. It has one of those bells on a spring that rings when you open the door (it's silent), and things in jars (they're invisible). Many more items coming soon or contact me if you don't see what you're looking for.

Typewriter Art - An Anthology

Typewriter Drawings 2012 are featured in "Typewriter Art - An Anthology' by Barrie Tullett. I just received a copy and it is an incredibly beautiful book! Get one here, or the original drawings are on sale here at the new studio shop.

the internet in real life

I made a small monument to celebrate.

1,000,000

Today one online version of People in Order reached a million views!

Visiting Artist at Cranbrook Academy of Art, MI

In March I will spend two days with students at Cranbrook Academy of Art and will give a Public Lecture on my work.