Bio

Jacob Clayborn was born in 1991 in Harrison, Arkansas. He spent the majority of his childhood growing up on a farm in the Ozark National Forest. Clayborn's Brother was a talented artist and musician along with several extended family members. Music, art, and exploring the wilderness were large facets of daily life growing up. In 2012, a friend had inspired Jacob to create mandala art as a stress relief technique. At the time, he had been fully immersed in creating acoustic music as an art form. Clayborn was deeply impacted by music festivals, volunteering, or working as a staff member. After a couple of years of teaching Taekwondo in Atlanta, Georgia, Clayborn returned to Northwest Arkansas in 2014. He began working closely with various production companies installing lighting, art installations, teaching mandala drawing workshops, and integrating mobile solar arrays into music festivals. Around 2015 Clayborn began building sculptural nests and natural material constructions as art installations for music festivals. At this time he was also working as a stagehand and general employee of the Walton Arts Center. In 2016 Clayborn traveled to Arise music festival in Colorado to volunteer in the art gallery under Annie Phillips. There he met many artists and fell in love with the sub-culture of Colorado music festivals. After returning home, Clayborn began making plans to move to Denver, Colorado. With very little money he set out to Sonic Bloom festival in southern Colorado. Clayborn found friendship in two Denver graffiti artists MPEK36 and Pher01, they took him in and he began living in a tree-house in their back yard. He traveled the next several years to various small pop-up galleries, music festivals, and to paint murals. In 2017 Clayborn helped construct a wooden temple at the Global Eclipse Gathering in Oregon. He also experimented with soft glass sculptures during this period. MPEK36 took him under his wing as an apprentice and taught Clayborn about murals and graffiti despite a language barrier. They began doing public art projects together for a period, then moved apart, they remain good friends. Clayborn began cultivating his own creative process and painting experiments, he was featured as an artist around the United States at various music festivals. Clayborn was the general manager of Threyda art collective from 2019-2020. This experience allowed Clayborn to meet a lot of artists and absorb inspiration. His art has most recently been featured at the 2019 Threyda Group Show and ETH Denver 2021 virtual gallery. Clayborn continues to seek art education and is constantly expanding his knowledge of the art world and seeking new techniques.