Clay Newton's quick bio: Clay Newton is an artist and designer, raised in the wine country's illustrious Napa proper. After spending three years as an apprentice of sorts at Richard Carter Studio, working at the French Laundry (pre- & post- Thomas Keller) and Trefethen Vineyards, he jumped the hills for Davis to attend the University, majoring in Art Studio with a minor in Sociology. His first kid, ZZ Anne Newton, was born in November 2005. Clay's technology career started in the bowels of the UC Davis IDEA Lab, where he studied under Randal Packer, Lynn Hershman, and Jon Winet. Jon later became one of Clay's close friends and collegues. In 1998, Clay started working for Eve.com which was really his indoctrination into the fast and furious dotcom mentality. When crumbled under the weight of idealab!, Clay was lucky enough to be able to cash into a house in yet another less-than-illustrious locale: Richmond (as of this writing in 2005, Richmond is the 11th most dangerous city in the US -- oooo scarey!) From Eve, Clay moved on to iEngineer which morphed into Assentive Solutions. When Assentive died a fiery death, Clay bounced over to Virage (2 hr commute hell.) After the third round of layoffs in 9 months, he shifted gears to Navis which tried to devour his soul but only took away a portion of his liver. In 2005, he joined Bank of America as a VP of Interaction Design. In the summer of 2006, Clay moved back to Napa and now telecommutes all the time.
On opening and upward
The
ee cummings poem I recited for
Lindsay and Mark's wedding.
Here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap
and to your(in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain
and here's to silent certainly mountains;and to
a disappearing poet of always,snow
and to morning;and to morning's beautiful friend
twilight(and a first dream called ocean)and
let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid
down with ought with because with every brain
which thinks it thinks,nor dares to feel(but up
with joy;and up with laughing and drunkenness)
here's to one undiscoverable guess
of whose mad skill each world of blood is made
(whose fatal songs are moving in the moon
the junk drawer since 1999.
