Artist Carolyn Clayton will exhibit “In-habit” in the Easthampton City Arts+ Gallery from March 8 – April 3, 2012. Clayton investigates domesticity, gender dichotomies, and human habits of consumption and disposal through methods of performance, sculpture, and documentation. She combines disparate materials such as wood, steel, fabric, plaster and glass with artificially colored plastics, foams, silicone, building waste and discarded objects. She sews together broken teacups and stitches her daily path–a recorded GPS pattern. Also to be viewed are Clayton’s sliced wooden houses that are filled with found objects, foam, paint, wood, plastic, toys, rope, and more. The innards of these sculptural dwellings when exposed reveal a similarity to cross-sectional anatomical cadavers. A video of the artist with her opposite self opposed at the other end of the saw, displays a once whole house being sawed in half—an act that may be part archetype destruction and/or part examination. In one photographic documentation she captures logs on a wooded path with the edges transformed by unnatural colors. Within all of these works by Clayton, is a development of the artist’s methodology of exploration and comparison of diametrically opposed matter and concepts.

In 2010 Clayton completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009. She has been awarded a grant from the Northampton Arts Council and has exhibited her work in Northampton, Pittsburgh, and Paris. She is a recent ECA+ artist and maintains a studio in Eastworks. Clayton is also a C3 Northampton Collective Member.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. The ECA+ gallery is located at 43 Main Street, Easthampton, MA. Gallery Hours are Tuesday- Saturday, 12-6 p.m.