John Clay is a webdesigner, artist, writer, and editor. After formal training in anthropology at Notre Dame University and in music composition at New England Conservatory and Washington State University, he began pursuing interests in visual art and philosophy. Theory, design, and application are the constants among these pursuits.

He writes on life, society, and philosophy, with a focus on democracy, philosophy of knowledge, and the labor theory of value. His article "The Deep Difference Between Labor and Use-Value" was published in July 2006 in Science & Society journal. His interview with artist Chuck Close is published online at Artzar.com and bhag.net.

His photos, paintings, and assemblages have shown at Chashama in New York City, Georgian Court University Library in New Jersey, and cafes and bars in New York City, Boston, and Minneapolis.

John Clay is the founder and webmaster of bhag.net, democraticpromise.org, and johnclaydesign.com and from 2003 to 2006 worked as Manager of Web & Information Systems for The Explorers Club. He was a volunteer for the election campaigns of New York City Council member Diana Reyna and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and in April 2006 led the Williamsburg Brooklyn canvass group for the Democratic Party's Neighbor-to-Neighbor National Organizing Day. He now lives in Minnesota.

I see each work of art as a ground for contemplation. I combine abstract or representational elements in an image which is, I hope, at once strongly assertive and ultimately indecipherable. No question can be the last or only question. No answer can be the last or only answer. This interpretive infinality is true of any sensory event we encounter. But it is all the more evident in a sensory event whose significance is all the less established in convention. Where the significance of a sensory event is well-established—as when encountering a stop sign at an intersection—the conventional question and answer as to what we see is so evident that the interpretive process is begun and finished all at once. However, where the significance is not well-established—as when encountering an unfamiliar image on canvas—the interpretive process is prolonged. The mind is focused on the interpretive task; it does not wander. The task is ongoing; its outcome remains an open issue. The mind stands in a state of poise and readiness. This is the state which Chinese Zen (chanzong) calls huatou, which can be translated as "the head, or leading thread, of discourse". It is the moment of cognitive animation before speech, the moment of open senses and spontaneous neural networking, the flurry of action which is concerted and focused but whose outcome is still indeterminate, still an open issue. Chanzong holds that this state of poised animation readies us for enlightenment. I hold that it readies us for life.