Lucy Gellman Photo
Clayton Michael Warner remembers when he first saw the tools of his trade. His mother carefully placed them in front of him: a neatly packed tool box, wrenches, and woodworking instruments arranged just so in their packaging before he unearthed them, and felt their sturdy presence in his hands.
He was 6 years old, putting together his first single-ply structures, and then, he just had a feeling there was something was wholly right with the world. Years later, he would study urban planning at the University of Utah. Moving to Madison, Conn., he would begin integrating industrial materials and woodworking into his artistic practice.
As this August wound down, he could see his work come to life anew in a new exhibition at 116 Crown. His paintings, along with one functional wood sculpture, adorn the walls from the front of the gastropub to its back room. The exhibition marks an artistic change to the establishment after Michelle Bradford’s exhibition “Flow” earlier this year, and makes 116 Crown another downtown business that doubles as an art gallery.
Warner’s works stress his interest in abstraction, tactility, and collage with utilitarian objects. Viewers might read then as just about anything. Spaceships. Tears. Still-warm raindrops on the cusp of fall or sludgy slush when winter is around the bend. A sun rising over East Rock. Half-exposed pebbles in a low river.
“I see the cosmos … Hubbell telescope combined with LSD,” said 116 Crown owner John Ginnetti, who hand-selects each of the artists. “I see it as moving into Clay — getting into his head.”
For Warner, who welcomes open interpretations, the pieces also mark a philosophical journey through visual art, sculpture, and most recently furniture making. Together, the works on display, done over multiple years, have encouraged him to think about creating in a holistic way. Making them has also instilled in him a sense of propulsion that he sees as continuing as he moves into new media.
“I would say that I appreciate a lot of art, but I draw my own flavor in what I create, what I paint,” he said at the show. “These five pieces here … it’s more of a reflective, outer-body type vision that I had during the creation of these paintings. A lot of the path of life and happiness, positive energy — general focusing on greater good. There was a lot of personal inspiration that went into these paintings.”
“It’s always felt right, because it’s always been my personal release,” he said.