Jason Clay Lewis is an artist and the Director of The Royal @ The Royal Society of American Art in Brooklyn, New York. His responsibilities include curating and promotion of all gallery exhibitions as well as the day to day running of the studios. His newly launched platform The Royal List allows artists to create FREE Artist Profiles and apply for Open Call exhibitions at The Royal.

From a very young age, I loved art and knew I would be an artist. My dad drew weird cartoons for me to fill in — and he would complement how well I stayed in the lines (so good craftsmanship was emphasized to me from the very beginning). He also made sculptures from found objects; he was always making, always building something. This had a huge impact on me and I followed suit.

The grid is a pattern originally used for mapping and for other rational, graphic displays of information. It is a metaphor for rationality, and I believe that is why the grid played such a big role in some threads of modernist art. The feeling was that rationality was the antithesis of superstition and religion, and cast aside the kind of murky romanticism found in so much art.

I was born in Washington DC in 1953 and grew up in McLean,Va. during the Cold War era. My mother was an Army brat and graduated from Georgetown University where she met my father, a DC native and World War II vet who began his career at the Pentagon when I was young.

I’m from the Lower Hudson Valley, in upstate New York—Tomkins Cove, Stony Point, just south of Bear Mountain along the Hudson River. It was a small town, the kind where as a kid you play baseball all day in the summer, and then ride your bike afterward to the grocery store to get a cold bottle of Coke to cool off.

I grew up in Sea Gate, Brooklyn which was very close to Coney Island. My mother was an Ab Ex painter, and my father was a photographer, so the conversations about art were ongoing, and prolific.

My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in Art Education. My exposure to and education in visual art and art history were in service to becoming an art educator. My creative practice was put aside for about 15 years while teaching art full-time, working towards a Masters degree in Art Education and raising a family.

I was born in Czechoslovakia. My family left and became political refugees in the early 80's. After spending a few months in a refugee camp in Austria we moved to New York. Have been here ever since working in art, film and advertising.

I never thought to become an artist in my life. In my first profession I was a pastry chef. Later on, I was serving for many years as a police officer as well as being a commander in the Austrian Anti-Terrorist-Unit COBRA. But in 2001 during my time at this unit I had a deep urge to work creatively.

With an intense passion for drawing and wanting to see the world, recognition at Oklahoma State University led to a scholarship and apprenticeship with Master Printer Bill Goldston at Universal Limited Art Editions in New York. On my very first day in New York, I met Jasper Johns who had come to work on a new print edition.