Artist in Residence
Artists connecting neighbors through creativity at Clayton Community Centre.
Current Artist in Residence: Cambium Arts
Currently on view at Clayton Community Centre is Memories and Futures, a kinetic textile artwork hanging from the ceiling in the lobby! Throughout the spring and summer of 2024, Cambium Arts (Amal Ishaque and Erv Newcombe) worked with the Surrey Archives and Clayton community members to explore marginalized histories and hopes for an equitable future. The resulting sculpture celebrates Clayton’s diversity with archival images, community artwork, and culturally significant fabrics.
See video about the project and a recording of the October 19, 2024 panel with Cambium Arts and staff from Surrey Archives:
Current Artist in Residence: Jen Clark
Currently on view at Clayton Community Centre is The Beekeeper’s Exhibition, a show of 2024 summer art camp children’s artwork, curated by artist Jen Clark. Building on the success of her 2022 residency on the same theme, Clark arranged for the kids to visit a beehive with the Honeybee Centre and learn about the importance of pollinators. Then they made artworks in response to their learning for this bee-themed exhibition!
Past residencies
Explore the Abstract with Loandbehold!
Artist Duo Loandbehold led the Spring 2024 artist residency to explore the question “who can make art?” With their community art project, Spilt Milk, the answer was: everyone! Based on the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw, the project explored abstract shapes, played with cloud shapes, and stoked our imaginations!
Feel at Home with Keely
Artist Keely O'Brien led the 2023 Artist in Residence program under the theme ‘Feel at Home’. She explored the question "How can a Community Centre feel like home?" and highlighted Clayton's uniqueness and community.
Youth takeover
This spring, youth took over and engaged one of our spaces at Clayton Community Centre, designing and creating an art installation.
Yoga and Art
A collaborative workshop series with guest instructor Ritika Kalra. The workshops combined art and yoga to increase the participants' sense of well-being.
Books by my Bed
In a collaboration with Surrey Libraries, Clayton Branch, participants created self-portraits through book lists that were displayed within the library.
Heart to Hearth
This project turned part of the Centre’s lobby into a beautiful “living room”, complete with a family portrait wall. The portraits were adapted from photographs from Surrey Archives and tied Surrey’s past to the present day
Learn about Bees with Jen
Jen Clark is a local artist whose paintings explore how humans see the natural world. Her painting style is both abstract and realistic. She specializes in large-scale murals, including projects with the Vancouver Mural Festival.
Jen worked with the summer arts camp kids to create The Beekeepers' Mural at Clayton Community Centre. Each camper participated in a field trip to a local hive, where they met a beekeeper from the Honeybee Centre. Campers saw how the hive works and learned the importance of healthy bee communities. Afterwards, campers painted a hexagon tile that became part of the final honeycomb pattern mural. View the final project to see what is buzzing.
Play with Tamara
Tamara Unroe is a maker, a puppeteer, and a committed dumpster diver. She studied visual art at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and puppetry with Sandglass Theatre in Vermont. She has worked with artists and communities in Canada, Taiwan, Europe, and Thailand. Tamara builds large- scale puppets, shadow puppets, costumes, and sculptural installations, often incorporating found objects and sound.
In spring of 2022, community members joined Tamara to play with puppets, light, and sound. Check out the completed video projects below!
Strike a Pose with Claire Moore
Claire Moore is a multi-media artist who lives and works near Crescent Beach. Her art practice ranges from small-scale sculptural interventions to large format oil paintings and her process is often collaborative.
Claire has collected poses from the Clayton Heights community—poses that reflect people's experience of the past year. Claire's drawings explore the many ways people have been impacted by the pandemic and how we hold these memories in our bodies. The collection of drawings, entitled Strike a Pose, is on display at Clayton Community Centre.
Tell Your Story with Jude
Jude Campbell is a Surrey-based artist who collects found objects and personal historical artifacts. She reconfigures these into multimedia installations to give voice to personal and community stories.
After meeting with local residents to listen to their stories, Jude used the text from these stories to create a hanging sculpture entitled COVID Reflections that hangs in Clayton Community Centre.
