Image, courtesy of the artist and Baker—Hall Gallery: Stay Safe, 2024, quilted textile, found fabric, hand-dyed cotton, and polystyrene, 32 x 23 x 2 inches
Solo exhibition featuring works by Jen Clay.
December 18, 2025 – January 20, 2026
Step into Jen Clay’s textile forest, and navigate your way out of the woods while playing Eyes of the Skin, an interactive video game animation made entirely of animated quilts.
Jen Clay creates creatures and environments inspired by cosmic horror and science-fiction stories to embody experiences of anxiety and depression. The quilted fabrics and plush textures of Clay's immersive works foster comfort, safety, and belonging, offering reassurance even as the artwork addresses difficult psychological states. Growing up in a rural mountain community in North Carolina shaped Clay's understanding of fear and belief. Stories of monsters and omens were embraced, while expressions of mental illness were often met with silence. Clay's work inhabits that contradiction, creating tender, strange beings that allow fears to be seen, softened, and shared.
Artist Lecture & Closing Reception:
When
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Artist Lecture: 5:00 – 6:00 pm CST
Reception: 6:00 – 7:00 pm CST
Where
Artist Lecture: 005 Biggin Hall
Reception: Biggin Gallery, 101 Biggin Hall
This event is free and open to the public. 005 Biggin Hall and Biggin Gallery are handicap accessible.
About the Artist
Jen Clay’s sewn textiles depict non-human figures inspired by cosmic horror and hallucinatory experiences, exploring mental health through tactile works. Born in 1985 in Mountain View, NC, Clay earned a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an MFA from the University of Florida (2014). Now based in South Florida, they have created interactive costumed performances for the Girls’ Club Collection (Fort Lauderdale, FL), Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL), MOCA North Miami, and Miami Light Box.
Clay has been an artist-in-residence at Oolite Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, with support from the Windgate Foundation. A short documentary on their practice, The Texture of Anxiety, received a regional Emmy. They were awarded a Knight Arts New Work Award for their quilt-composed video game and installation, Eyes of the Skin, at Locust Projects (Miami, FL, 2023). Their permanent public artwork, commissioned through Art in Public Places, is installed at Brisas del Este Apartments (Miami, FL, 2022). Clay’s first solo exhibition at Emerson Dorsch (2023), titled, This World Doesn’t Belong to You, featured quilted works with sewn messages that they began creating in 2020 during the pandemic. Recently, Clay was a McColl Center artist-in-residence (January – April 2025), supported by the Broward Innovation Grant. Clay’s studio is in CITY STATE in Little Haiti, Miami.
Presented by the Auburn University Department of Art & Art History, and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in Auburn University’s College of Liberal Arts.