Artists in Residence

Feel at Home with Keely

Keely O'Brien is an interdisciplinary, community engaged artist. Her work responds to the uniqueness of each new place she encounters. With community members, she explores the nuances of space, home, and belonging. Her projects celebrate the creativity of all participants.

In 2023, Keely, along with the community of Clayton, will ask: how can a community centre feel like home?

Keely will be providing programs that focus on belonging, agency, and connection:

• Learn about your neighbours through library book recommendations
• Create a beautiful heirloom that expresses your family history
• Watch Clayton youth take over the lobby with an exciting art installation.
• Increase your sense of well-being through art and movement in a yoga and art class.

Through these projects, Keely and community participants will come together through creativity.

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.