Clay was born and raised in Tennessee where he participated in the Governor's school for the Fine Arts before earning his BFA from Wheaton College in Illinois. He has been self employed and living as a sculptor in Colorado Springs since 1996. As he sees it, art is personal. It manifests from the deeper levels of an individual. Because faith is an integral part of my life, when I sculpt, this theme surfaces consistently. Although I employ the full range of sculptural language from representational to abstract, my passion is to express the figure as simply as possible to capture the essence of the pose and create space for the transcendent message to resonate with the viewer. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Denver, Littleton, and Loveland, CO, Taos, NM, Philadelphia, PA, and Nashville, TN and shown in Wheaton, IL, Scottsdale, AZ, Fort Drum, NY, Jackson, MS, Memphis, TN, Brookgreen Gardens, SC and internationally in Illesheim, Germany.