Clayton Colvin

Space Mountain

Hardcover

71 pages,
over 20 color photographs

with texts and essays by
Ed Skoog, Brian Edmonds
and Brian Bishop
click here

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I am very excited to be part of the current exhibition at the Mobile Museum of Art. There is a cool online catalog coming, so go to their website and check it out. LOTS of great Southern artists in this show!
here is the current available info:

TODAY'S VISUAL LANGUAGE:Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look

"Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential."- Wassily Kandinsky

The genre of abstract, non-representational art is a living, vibrant form of expression for a surprisingly large number of artists in the Southeastern states, as it is worldwide. TODAY'S VISUAL LANGUAGE: Southern Abstraction, A Fresh Look is an overview of contemporary abstract art. A variety of materials including painting on canvas and paper, drawings on paper, glass, fiber/mixed media and collage materials are included, The invited 37 artists have ties to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia.

Organized by the Mobile Museum of Art.
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Field and Stream, an exhibition of paintings by Clayton Colvin will run at Georgia College Museum June 7-August 22, 2012.
A reception and artist's talk will take place August 22nd from 5-7 p.m.
This program is sponsored in part by the Patience Elizabeth Russell Peterson Endowed Fund of the Georgia College Foundation.

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This weekend I had the pleasure of welcoming Ron Platt and the Birmingham Museum of Art Contemporary Art Support Group, the Collectors Circle, to my studio as part of their Spring tour.
I got to show them the new group of paintings. They had great questions, and insights!

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May 11. 2012
I showed a new selection of paintings at Material, the amazing space run by Hamlet Dobbins.

Memphis is such a great art city!
I took my son with me and we caught a red birds game, ate BBQ twice (winner was Cozy Corner).

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I am now represented by Maus Contemporary Art. please contact the gallery to inquire about work or a studio visit. here is a link to their website:
http://www.betapictorisgallery.com/

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I have a painting included in the show up ay Space 301 off centre, in Mobile, until January. This show celebrates a really cool art space/collective that existed for a few years in Fairhope, Alabama. I am really happy to have been able to work with this group in the past and to be able to participate in this current project.

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I am very pleased to have placed a painting in their collection. It is a very fresh piece, titled "empty". It will be included in a 2012 exhibition of abstract painting from the South.

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The Birmingham Museum of Art has aquired one of my drawings.

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Emotionally absorbing 'Werk' at UAB Visual Arts Gallery is provocative, puzzling
Published: Sunday, June 20, 2010, 11:31 AM
Special to The Birmingham News

Mimi Moncier's paintings have a monotonous, Orwellian atmosphere. (Special)
by James R. Nelson

Werk. Works by Tom Wegryzynowski, Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom, Packard Jennings, John Pilson, Mimi Moncier, Wendy Heldmann, Becky Stern, Greely Myatt and John Miserando. Curated by Clayton Colvin. UAB Visual Arts Gallery, 1530 3rd Ave. South. Through June 30.

Puzzling, profound and prophetic, this is one of the more unusual offerings in a local gallery in recent memory. Clayton Colvin has assembled works by 10 artists that are very different from each other, yet completely compatible in intent. The title, “Werk,” one presumes, is a phonetic expression of “work,” which encapsulates a visual exploration by the artists represented of how work affects some human beings.

The major installation piece by Ann Carlson and Mary Ellen Strom is “Sloss, Kerk, Rosenberg and Moore,” a large cubicle with a projection showing four men, probably lawyers and certainly corporate figures. Fiercely playing out behind bland surfaces, it is like watching slow boiling water under a glass lid.

Mimi Moncier’s paintings are hung in clusters that have an Orwellian atmosphere of curious monotony, a feeling of ant-like activity that demands rote action.

This is one of the more provocative exhibitions of the year. Whatever meanings it has, the meanings will be different for every viewer. In a sort of left-handed way, it celebrates individuality by belaboring monotony. It is a presentation that is not so much something to be figured out as to be experienced and emotionally absorbed.


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Artist Clayton Colvin returns to Mobile with exhibit titled 'Fiction' at the Eichold Gallery
Published: Sunday, January 31, 2010, 10:46 AM Updated: Friday, January 29, 2010, 7:45 PM
Thomas B. Harrison, Press-Register
Clayton Colvin issued a tongue-in-cheek “disclaimer” for his new exhibit, fittingly titled “Fiction.”
Any resemblance between his paintings and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
In his artist’s statement for the exhibit, which opens this week at the Eichold Gallery at Spring Hill College, Colvin says he is “really interested in fiction because it’s this fluid, frictionless space where anything can happen.”
(Image courtesy Eichold Gallery/Spring Hill College)
A painting from the solo exhibit "Fiction," showcasing work by Clayton V. Colvin.
Or to quote the poet William S. Burroughs: “Nothing is true; everything is permitted.”

There are no walls, no perceptible boundaries in this exhibit of perhaps a dozen paintings by Colvin. The work will remain on view through February. (See information box below.)

The artworks vary widely in size and subject matter, but each bears the artist’s distinctive style. Images of his work are available on his Web site: www.claytoncolvin.com.

“One or two (are) images of figures looking at paintings,” Colvin says by long distance from Birmingham. “I’m interested in how we interact with image, how image controls us and we control image.”
One painting depicts a figure cuddling and holding a ball of paint.
“I like that, caring for paint,” he says. “It’s about the relationship people have with the medium. looking at it or in the actual creative process.”
The Eichold exhibit is a kind of homecoming for Colvin, who was education curator for the nonprofit Centre for the Living Arts during 2007-08. He was curator for several impressive exhibits including “Registering the Invisible” and the enigmatic “Southern Gothic Now.”
“Clayton is an amazing artist,” says Wanda Sullivan, gallery director for the Eichold Gallery. “I first meet (him) at Space 301 (when he was a) curator. I took my students to see a show and he spoke so eloquently. I was so impressed and inspired by his . . . vision. I invited him to come present his work at Spring Hill a short time later.

“His work is complex, conceptually and technically. The (paintings) actually remind me of giant sketchbook pages. There is an ‘immediacy’ about them that I particularly admire.”
Colvin says this exhibit has been in the works for about a year. The title was inspired by his reading habits over the past year or so.
(Press-Register/Bill Starling)
Artist Clayton Colvin in 2007 when he was education curator for the nonprofit Centre for the Living Arts in Mobile, Alabama.
“I like the freedom of the genre, the form,” he says. He stopped reading so many research books and began perusing works such as Milan Kundera’s “Slowness,” Margaret Atwood’s “The Blind Assassin,” and the popular the vampire book “The Strain” by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

The change in his bedside reading impacted his artwork, according to Colvin.
“I think my painting (got) better when I stopped reading critical theory books and started reading fiction,” he says.
The paintings in this exhibit reflect the artist’s desire to approach each one differently and change his process “so that it all stays really fresh,” he says. “I started to look at painting as a way to engineer things. There is a sense of discovery, but I’m also consciously trying to shape what I want see and how I want to approach things.”
Colvin left the nonprofit CLA in May 2008. He and his wife Caroline and their son returned to Birmingham, where Colvin teaches drawing at the University of Alabama Birmingham and his wife resumed her residency in pediatric medicine at the university.
During his year in Mobile, Colvin painted sparingly. He says he produced only four paintings. Two were purchased for private homes; he kept one and destroyed one. “It didn’t turn out the way I wanted,” he says, “but I got to keep one.”
The artist says he is now more prolific than ever and his curating duties are limited. He will curate one exhibit this year for UAB on office and cubicle culture; he will have an exhibit this spring at the University of Memphis. The Birmingham Museum of Art acquired one of his paintings.
“I’ve really been productive in the studio,” he says, “so it was probably good for me to take that year at 301. It changed the way I work. My work now is a lot more patient, a little slower than before. I don’t feel rushed.”

WHAT: Artwork by Clayton V. Colvin
WHEN: Feb. 1-26
WHERE: Eichold Gallery, campus of Spring Hill College
DIRECTOR: Wanda Sullivan
RECEPTION: 6-8 p.m. Feb. 4; gallery talk at 7 p.m.
HOURS: 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday
INFO: www.claytoncolvin.com


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3-D work shines in UM Juried Art Exhibition
Published: Sunday, April 25, 2010, 7:03 AM Updated: Sunday, April 25, 2010, 8:03 AM
Thomas B. Harrison, Press-Register
The 2010 edition of the University of Mobile Juried Art Exhibition could be subtitled “Art with Presence.” Or perhaps “A New Dimension.”
Indeed, few of the 85 works here are humdrum or predictable, which is evident when you take in the number of three-dimensional works on view in Martin Hall. Front and center is “Ring Cloth,” a wire sculpture by Jean Flint of Hammond, La., which earned 1st Place.
“What I liked about this piece is definitely a simplicity of design,” says juror Graham C. Boettcher, Ph.D., curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art. “It’s large chain-mail, if you will. It should feel heavy, but it’s light.
(Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)
University of Mobile Juried Art Exhibition artwork is judged April 15 by Graham C. Boettcher, left, of the Birmigham Museum of Art and exhibit organizer Phillip Counselman, assistant professor of art at UM. They are studying a piece by Jeff Mickey titled "Mill Town."
“For a work that is not a kinetic sculpture, this feels like it has . . . lift and movement, this upward thrust. It feels like something growing or emerging from the surface.”
A few feet away, Boettcher points out “Autoconstruction 4,” a ceramic and mixed-media piece by Andrew Cho of Atlanta, who earned an honorable mention.
“I like the direction this artist is taking with ceramics,” Boettcher says. “I find that even contemporary ceramists are still really rooted in tradition and making utilitarian vessels, so it’s nice when you see an artist who understands the sculptural possibilities and that it’s OK to mix media.
“This one has a strong presence (and) I like the idea of what’s going on here. It’s almost like he’s trying to give visual form to memories (with) family portraits inside a person’s mind.”
Phillip Counselman, assistant professor of art at UM, is director of the show once known as “Art with a Southern Drawl.” He says the exhibit drew about 350 entries, and the 85 works selected for inclusion fill up Martin Hall.
“I’ve kept it in these two galleries,” Counselman says, “but we had to push it out a little more this year. Last year people wanted more to look at.”
Visitors have plenty to see this year. Even the paintings and photographs are a little edgy in this exhibit, which will remain on view through May 14. (See information box.)
The 3rd Place winner, “Dreams” by Robby Klein of Ponchatoula, La., is a striking image of a young man wearing a Superman T-shirt and what appears to be an astronaut’s headgear. He is seated (or slumped) in front of his car at twilight; the headlights are on. The setting is an abandoned industrial space.
“The composition is stunning and the light is exquisite,” Boettcher says. “You really get a sense of place, at the gloaming, and you wonder who the heck is this kid is. As a viewer, I feel like I’m invited to complete the narrative.”
This work, like many others in a compelling show, invites repeated viewing — and that was one of Boettcher’s criteria for selecting the artwork.
(Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)
“Don’t Make Me Wake Up #1” by Jeff and Sabrina Williams of Gainesville, Fla., who earned an honorable mention.
“The winners and honorable mentions were selected for their technical merit, not subject matter,” he says. “What distinguishes some from others is the desire to go back and look, and look again.”
Boettcher awarded 2nd Place to “Considering Surfing Girl” by Clayton V. Colvin of Birmingham. If the artist’s name is familiar, it should be. Colvin is the former education coordinator for Space 301 in Mobile.
Colvin’s painting, rendered in pink and lavender — “a gutsy move,” says Boettcher, who suggests that the work “walks a thin line between figuration and abstraction, then steps over and back and kind of does a jig on that line.”
Information
WHAT: University of Mobile Juried Art Exhibition
WHEN: through May 14
WHERE: Thomas T. Martin Hall on campus
WINNERS: 1st Place, “Ring Cloth,” Jean Flint, Hammond, La.; 2nd Place, “Considering Surfing Girl,” Clayton V. Colvin, Birmingham; 3rd Place, “Dreams,” Robby Klein, Ponchatoula, La.
HONORABLE MENTION: “Don’t Make Me Wake Up #1,” Jeff and Sabrina Williams, Gainesville, Fla.; “Autoconstruction 4,” Andrew Cho, Atlanta, Ga.; “Thought of a Thought,” Trish Ramsay, Hammond, La.
JUROR: Graham C. Boettcher, Ph.D., curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art
ORGANIZER: Phillip Counselman, assistant professor of art
INFO: 1-800-946-7267, Ext. 2283; or 251-442-2283; or e-mail umartexhibit@umobile.edu.
NOTE: Annual art exhibition showcases 85 works in a variety of media by 65 artists artists from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.
One of the most striking images in the exhibit is “Don’t Make Me Wake Up #1” by Jeff and Sabrina Williams of Gainesville, Fla., who earned an honorable mention. The constructed image of a rundown trailer might be a “grab” from an independent movie, or perhaps a rendering. It definitely boasts a spellbinding cinematic quality.
“I’ve not seen anything like it,” Boettcher says. “My initial inclination was to wonder . . . whether this is part of a film project, or ‘clay-mation.’ It’s all artifice, a totally constructed image from ground up. It has a place in the tradition of the grotesque, kind of drippy and tough to look at in parts.
“But once you get over the initial shock of it and begin to look inside and see how carefully everything is constructed, it becomes a really fascinating image and invites continued looking.”
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