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Jessica Clay is an interdisciplinary artist working in Nashville, TN. She was born in Anchorage, Alaska and and also grew up in North Carolina before moving to Tennessee. There she received her BFA from Watkins College of Art, Design, & Film. She is a co-curator of the artist run space mild climate.

Currently I am working on a project where I am collecting documents of excavating and digging in preparation for new building in Nashville. I am using those documents to make paintings and other works about this phase of intense change in the structure and identity of this city.

This is also part of a larger project, Amateur Archeology, which is an imaginary and potentially real group of citizens and artists who go into these excavated sites (these potential dig sites) to uncover what used to be there and what could possibly be there. To remember and recreate through the physical (and imaginary) act of entering these spaces while they exist in transition from one sharply delineated purpose to another one.

- Jessica Clay, 2017

Night Diggers project from As We Dig We Bury, ZIEHERSMITH (New York, NY)

This space used to be an alley between the buildings and is still partially enclosed on one side. There is a strip of dirt that is exposed to the elements on the other side. Beginning to dig, we started in the back part which was dirt where the concrete slab was partially removed. 

As we dug down a rusty metal grid emerged and so we concentrated in that area. We went as far as we could, following the dirt strip in the back and piling up the debris as high as we could without it starting to fall off the sides. We added in all the found stuff like chipped ceramics, safety glass, and roots that we had brought to the site.

- Jessica Clay, 2017

* "Night Diggers" images courtesy of the artist (including header image)