River House Arts
Since 2011, River House Arts LLC has been the space where we, John and Elizabeth Clay, manage and promote our creative work. The name is literal in that we began our shared creative endeavors in a house by the shore of the mighty Mississippi River in Minneapolis, later moving to Saint Paul and finally to Stillwater a few blocks from the scenic St. Croix River. The name is also metaphorical. Our creative work flows in curves, eddies, and rapids. Visual art, fine art jewelry, website design, writing. Always with aesthetic inspiration, sometimes with commercial aspirations, we make an art of everything we do.
John and Elizabeth Clay
We are writers and artists living in Stillwater and Duluth, Minnesota. John was born in Indiana and spent formative years of his childhood in Africa and South America and his adult years in Boston and New York City before joining Elizabeth in Minnesota. He holds a bachelors degree in anthropology and a masters degree in music composition.
Elizabeth, born in Minnesota and adopted into a loving family, found and met many of her birth relatives through years of exhaustive genealogical research. She spent formative years of her young adulthood traveling extensively in Europe. She holds a bachelors degree in psychology and a masters degree in horticulture.
We have been writing, editing, and making art together since 2007. In 2019 we produced a commissioned public artwork titled "Strong as Steel" still on display today in St. Ingbert, Germany. John's non-fiction writing, with Elizabeth as editor, has been published online or in print in Minnesota, Georgia, New York, and California USA, and Saarland Germany. As members of Kanabec County Art Asociation and League of Longfellow Artists 2009 through 2014, we exhibited our mixed media paintings, assemblages, and hand-crafted jewelry across Minnesota's Metro and Central regions.