Clay Woolery is one of thirteen artists selected as a Gallery 263 Small Works Project artist. This project presents artwork in flat files at the gallery and on our website. Visit Woolery’s Small Works Project page →
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Although I am originally from rural Missouri, I have lived in the Boston area for nearly a decade, during which time I have found my voice as an artist engaged in several communities. I hope that in showing my work I can also bring attention to the vibrant queer community in Boston, which has been my chosen family and source of inspiration. From Drag artists to DJs, to fellow visual artists, actors and activists, I situate my practice in this interdisciplinary web and strive to collaborate more often and in new ways. I can’t tell you anything about myself without acknowledging the depth of experience I have gained on the dance floor, in the makers’ spaces, marching in protests, and making creative endeavors happen.
What kind of art do you make?
My art practice is fueled by experimentation. After taking on the self-imposed challenge to work in performance, installation, and ephemeral artmaking while studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, I have since returned to making drawings that have representational and figural elements. Through working as a figure model for drawing classes I realized that I was engaging in an under-recognized form of collaboration wherein my physical performance generated drawings. My body became a site for several creative processes to intersect and reflect one another, including, crucially, my own expressive language. This revelation has transformed my drawing practice, and has kept my otherwise nomadic creative output in a bodily home.
What concepts does your art explore?
The representation of the human form can be understood historically as a foundational drive in artmaking. Even the most abstract, cerebral work reflects a mark making or some other physicality that other humans recognize as a human act. I have taken to depicting the human form in action to crystallize the symbolic nature of its gesture.
Conversely, I view certain framings of these actions (and the drawings) destabilize the symbol-quality of the human form. Therefore, I have limited detail and embellishment in my marks to maintain a universality of each active figure. While I am keenly interested in translating movement from the symbolic figure to the eye, I propose that the frames (which includes the space around the figure, the setting and context, as well as the composition) emanate from the active symbol, rather than containing or defining them. The symbol of a human body swimming is a bridge between humanity and water and informs us regarding the nature of that body of water; it does so differently than the symbol of the human body floating in water, or drowning in it.
Can you tell us about the work you have on view in your flat file drawer at the gallery?
The works included at Gallery 263 are pastel chalk on black paper completed in 2021, and are a modular series of symbolic-active-figure drawings. They were the result of the bodily awareness figure modeling gave me, and compositionally are informed not by a reference model but by the strategies I developed for figure modeling.
This includes, centrally, the concept of contrapposto, which is the anatomical distribution of weight that creates an offset of axial planes between symmetrical elements of the human body. The asymmetry inherent in action informed my decision to represent the figures with two intersecting strokes of different colors, which connect opposite arms to legs and split the head.
The figures from this series often have a bright green aura, which I felt vibrated uniquely against the black paper and emphasized the way in which the chalk “carves” the negative space. The aura mark traces the overall outline of the figural marks and was my first approach to visually “crystallizing” the action-symbols.
Where do you make your work?
I work in my tiny studio when the work is small or surreptitiously in my building’s basement when it gets large. I am definitely guilty of working on public transit and while traveling, which is not very practical for pastel chalk!
What are your favorite materials to use? Most unusual?
After making the work on view, I have since worked almost exclusively with acrylic paint markers which I find accomplish many of the goals I had for the chalk drawings with more dexterity. While I cherish the immediacy and crudeness of the chalk, I feel I can focus my work more tightly with paint pens. I occasionally mix them together with chalk for surprising results!
My most unusual material, as of late, is clothing. The acrylic markers have opened up the possibility of creating wearable art, which has been a fun and challenging departure for me. I have had several open commissions which have let me introduce more terrain for my figures to traverse and interact with one another.
What historical and contemporary artists inspire you?
Living artists who inspire me include Julie Mehretu, Kara Walker, Julian Opie, Paul Sepuya, and Cassils. I’ll refrain from mentioning any of the amazing artists I know personally because I might cry.
Artists that have passed away who still live in my mind include Mike Kelley, Marcel Duchamp, Barkley Hendricks, Leonora Carrington and Hieronymous Bosch.
When did you decide you wanted to be an artist?
I was raised by artists who made less and less art as they focused on raising me. I remember distinctly feeling that I was going to pick up where they left off, perhaps as a form of gratitude for all they sacrificed to give me a fighting chance in this world.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
If you can purchase art, please consider contributing to the direct aid requests (gofundme, kickstarter, etc.) of queer people and people of color that are flooding the internet. Their need is the tip of the iceberg: many poor and rent burdened young people are too ashamed to seek the help of strangers but are nonetheless being crushed by systemic exploitation. There is nobody who can effectively redistribute wealth besides those who have it.