Rex & Rose is a brand new coffee shop located in the beautiful and historic Security Building on 4th Avenue. Walk inside and you will see the works of two of the most prolific artists Olympia has to offer. They come with such integrity and tightly woven history in our Olympia arts community that it would simply not be the same without them.
Gabi and Alec Clayton met in New York City in 1973 while working at Everything for Everybody, an organization that helped people in need. They got burned out living in NY and moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi where Alec is from, and they lived there for 11 years. While there, they produced and published Mississippi Arts & Letters which was recently archived by University of Mississippi. It was the equivalent of OLY ARTS print quarterly of which Alec is the editor and Gabi is the digital publication manager. Alec was teaching in the art department at The University of Southern Mississippi, and Gabi studied drawing and painting and then film and animation there. She later transferred to The Evergreen State College for her final year, and so they moved to Olympia. Alec started working in the bookshop B. Dalton which was in the Capitol Mall. After graduating from TESC, Gabi earned a masters in counseling and set to work counseling on trauma and general counseling issues until her retirement in 2022.
Alec hit the ground running. His first week in Olympia he had paintings in the Erotic Art Show at the Juan Alonso Sullivan Gallery in Seattle, for which he’d applied remotely before moving. He also had a solo show at the Smithfield Café in downtown Olympia.
Alec likes to challenge the viewer in various ways with his art. His was the first installation show at Childhood’s End, and he named it Rhythms and Evolution. He lined all the walls from side to side, wrapping around in a continuous line, eventually splitting up the 75-foot installation to sell in sections.
As Alec was profusely painting to keep up with demand, Gabi was working and caring for their two kids Noel and Bill. She taught herself web design after their younger son Bill died in 1995 in order to tell his story, and advocate for and support LGBTQIA+ children by expanding to make other websites. Gabi was the first person to put Olympia Pride online. https://www.gabiclayton.com/BillsStory/
In 2016 Gabi bought an iPad to make her own digital art; she self-taught Procreate and thus launched her current body of fine artwork.
In 2002 Alec needed open heart surgery. This prompted him to switch from painting to writing, as the process of painting for him was very physical and he was worried that persisting with his fine art would further damage his heart. The transition was easy as he’d already been freelance writing arts reviews for The News Tribune, Volcano, The Olympian, Art Access. He has written an impressive number of novels since then, and two books of art theory and criticism.
Alec is highly influenced by Abstract Expressionism which was hugely popular while he was in art college. De Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Picasso are particular favorites of his. His work swings back and forth between figurative and abstract or a combination of both, with suggested but not fully defined images.
In Rex & Rose, his works on display are mostly figurative, chosen by co-owner Jay Michael Becker who curates the shows there and who came over to their house to make his selection. The content of Alec’s work is both from memory and imagination, and purely random. The paintings combine disparate images resulting in chaotic disorienting compositions which invite the audience to interpret their own meaning. (It would be remiss not to mention that a lot of the imagery in this selected work has graphic or suggested adult content). He uses oil stick and oil paint, but mostly oil stick, he tells me he likes these media because they are versatile, oil dries slower and so is more workable and more easily manipulated, and this gives him more time to change things before drying. He says it is good for layering and scraping, adding to the depth and chaos. He says it is difficult to say what period in his practice the works shown are from, because he reworked his art so much.
There are two Swimmer paintings in his show, he says they are two of over a hundred Swimmer paintings in the series. There are two Anatom paintings. They are creatures from a series of five. The people sitting next to a beach or swimming pool are labeled Fun in the Sun. The painting is from a series named Gerbils because he thought they looked silly; there are about seventy pieces in this series. Top right on the wall is a one-off as the figure is black and white. It portrays the face of a woman which gets more, or less abstract in progression. Two of the paintings are from the Rhythms installation at Childhood’s End. One of them (hung vertically in the corner) Gabi claimed for herself and is not for sale.
On the opposite wall is Gabi’s series of imagined portraits named Nobody Jones because she wanted to avoid untitled. The title is clever and intriguing and reminiscent of the ubiquitous selfie; the bombardment of face images on social media which makes one feel lost in a sea of self-advertising often makes us all, including the selfie-takers, feel overwhelmed with the muchness of it all. In contrast, Gabi’s ‘selfies’ are like the response to the projected over-confidence, there is a sense of feeling lost and identity-less as the title describes. They are all individual in their loneliness and collective identity. Her printed pieces vary in brush style but have a similar sensibility and color palette. They are all the same size except for one, but being digital prints, they can be reproduced any size should one want to commission one. Gabi says the practice of making them is like meditating for her. They are mostly playful but sometimes serious. She says her art has sometimes been influenced by television, news, and politics. She says she’s not hiding that they’re digital but plays with trying to make them look painterly or drawn. All her pieces in this show are part of her Nobody Jones series except for the one on the bottom right, named Playing Summer Fetch, which shows a person playing with a dog and is more narrative and illustrative. Edges are important to her work, and she often incorporates a drawn edge framing technique in the composition which emphasizes the portrait gallery effect.
Gabi says she likes working digitally because there is no cleanup, it’s very accessible and portable. She says it’s a challenging medium, but versatile; it can look like a purely digital image, or a painting, or both styles combined, and she enjoys exploring this flexibility. She begins by making a mark or two, then finds the image and brings it out.
It is evident that Gabi and Alec are heavily influenced by each other’s work; indeed, they joke about the dynamics of offering each other advice and how their advice is given and received. Both bodies of work are very different in execution and media, to the human lived condition; indeed they have much experience in this department and are to be applauded for their unique vision, respective dialogues and talent. This is the first time they have shown together other than in their home, and it is engaging to see how the two bodies of work interact with each other in such a beautiful setting. Go see this show.
WHAT: Form & Pose: a joint show of the artworks of Gabi and Alec Clayton
WHERE:
Rex & Rose Coffee Shop
203 4th Avenue, Suite A, Olympia
ground floor of the Security Building
WHEN:
through the end of October
LEARN MORE
www.gabiclayton.com
http://www.alecclayton.com
https://mudflatpress.com/alec-clayton/
https://www.gabiclayton.com/BillsStory
https://www.instagram.com/rexandroseoly