Lenka Clayton: The Distance I Can Be From My Son

In 2013, Lenka Clayton attempted to objectively measure the furthest distance she could be from her toddler son in three environments: a city park, the alley behind their Pittsburgh home, and in the aisles of a local supermarket. The trio of videos humorously underlines the challenging judgment calls that parents make about how much autonomy to give their children. Clayton produced these videos as part of a larger project, An Artistic Residency in Motherhood (ARiM), a grant-funded residency she created out of her own home “to explore the…upheaval that parenthood brings and allow it to shape the direction of my work, rather than try to work ‘despite it.’”

In conjunction with the Clayton video installation in the Film & Video Gallery, a selection of Clayton’s Typewriter Drawings will be on view in an adjacent gallery. Clayton began making drawings using her typewriter as part of ARiM. For the past seven years, using a now finely-honed skill, she has created everything from a broken screen door to a realistic-looking New York Times cover using apostrophes, asterisks, en-dashes, and a lot of paper turning. The drawings are on loan from private collections.