Jason Clay Lewis

The Royal @ RSOAA in partnership with TECHNE in Oceanside, California is pleased to present Color Continuum, a group exhibition featuring artists Chuck Thomas, Nancy Baker, Gabe Brown, Jon Elliott, Jason Clay Lewis, Geoffrey Owen Miller, Elizabeth Riley, Jason Rohlf, Linda Kamille Schmidt, Suzan Shutan

The Royal in partnership with TECHNE in Oceanside, California is pleased to present Boundaries Edge, a group exhibition featuring artists Judith Braun, Mike Cockrill, Riccarda de Eccher, Amelia Biewald, Jean-Marc Superville Sovak, Jeph Gurecka, Greg Hopkins, Mark Lewis, Kevin O’hara, Trish Tillman, Kathleen Vance, Rebecca Webb, Jay Bell, Melanie Taylor, Catherine Ruane, Adriene Hughs, Adam Belt, and Jennifer Anne Bennett.

I grew up in northern Italy, in a city called Udine, about one and a half hour north of Venice. No one in my family had any interest in art, but for some reason I always did. As a teenager, every other year, a friend of mine and I took the train to the Venice Biennale. Back then, I did not have the intellectual tools to understand what I was looking at, but I was curious and interested. Some of the people from my small city would look at the art and say "my five your old son could do that". I kept looking, fighting these prejudices, trying to stay open-minded.

Growing up in a very small and isolated hamlet in the middle of forest drenched western Pa., was by no means a hotbed of creativity and social discourse, let alone skateboarding which I always longed to do. The amount of hills, valleys, and dirt roads was enough to discourage any activities without a motor. As an only child with a plethora of pets ranging from one horse to seventy ducks and pretty much all other genus mixed in between was from what I recall idyllic but there was a sense of foreboding uneasiness. As I developed more formidable thoughts and awareness these creatures lacking intellect became less interesting over the years.