"To me Berry Gordy remains my inspiration.  He represents living proof that if you believe in yourself and are willing to back that up with hard work, your dreams can become your legacy."   -    Chris Clark -------   At first glance, young 17-year-old Chris Clark  - a tall blue-eyed California import - seemed an unlikely candidate for membership in Detroit’s closely-knit Motown family. It wouldn’t be the first time looks were misleading where she was concerned.   Booked at 13 into a series of summer concerts featuring the current big names in Pop (Jan & Dean, Dick & Dee Dee, & The Ventures), Chris was rebooked the next summer - but this time with the Coasters, The Olympics, Dobie Gray & Bobby Freeman.   By the time she came to Motown’s attention, she had been on the road nearly two years - working nightclubs and after hours joints with various Blues/ Jazz groups, often barely two steps ahead of the Vice Squad - which frowned mightily on underage performers.   “I beat down their doors”, said Chris. “Believe me, when the Berry Gordy Express steamed by - it was pure instinct. You grabbed hold with all your might and asked questions later. I didn’t care where we were going, I just knew I wanted to be part of the commotion that got us there.”   And so she proved to be.

Thanks to Gordy’s renowned genius at spotting and developing raw talent, she went on to become not only the first White album  artist on the label  - but an integral part of his creative team as the Motown Sound stormed the doors of White America to make its place in history.   Though its first seeds were nurtured in a tiny building on Detroit’s West Grand Blvd., once it took root, Motown branched quickly in the wake of its sudden fame. Hit records were the first step for not only its shining stars - but the growing wave of talent being developed in support of them.   The multi-talented Chris soon branched off into composing music (for herself and others), editing video, taking up still photography (eventually chronicling more than 16 years of Motown history), writing special material, and serving as Motown Productions VP of Creative Control as she trailed Gordy thru nightclubs, into television, onto concert hall stages, and finally to Hollywood’s very door where Motown secured a solid foothold with its first film: Lady Sings The Blues.   True to form, Diana Ross was not the only talent Gordy had pulled up through the ranks. Chris also found her way into the mix once again when she was called in to rewrite the script, eventually garnering her own Academy Award nomination as screenwriter.

Though she worked in many arenas, it was in photography that she began to personally explore and define her own place in the world. Harboring a grudge against posing for pictures, Chris honed her skills in the field of candid photography - developing an eye for capturing the unguarded moments & emotions of the surrounding flurry.   For the most part, the product of these early years served as learning tools, seldom seeing the light of day. The exceptions were pieces she shot that found their way into Gordy’s private collection, or onto the walls of his various homes in the form of collages.   Stifled by the limitations, Chris soon began to expand the forms and uses of the images she took. Supplied with a darkroom, she spent all her off hours trying to absorb its many possibilities - but realized her lack of technical knowledge was too overwhelming to overcome on her own.  The computer, however, was not.

Intrigued by the accidental double exposures she’d encountered, Chris contrived to cross the process over into the digital realms, where she could better take control of the resulting images. It was a short jump into the early graphics software, such as Adobe.   Essentially self taught, she found ways to use the computer like a paintbrush, fragmenting & filtering the images in miniscule increments as they wound their way toward unknown destinations.   For the first time, she began to experiment with color - having honed her skills entirely in Black & White. She followed her instincts in manipulating the images, often reaching back to recoup early work & set it on experimental new paths.   No longer bound by a single image, she was able to incorporate her familiarity with the subjects into pieces of work that shaded and highlighted the facets of their personalities.   It was the early results of this ‘capture’ process - which inspired Gordy to allow her access to the Motown photo archives and the eventual 6 years in a cabin in the backwoods of Arizona to nurture the process. What soon followed was a push to more fully expand the limitations of the media at hand. Frustrated with the one dimensional end product on canvas, Chris began to experiment with a combination of polymers, resins, varnishes & home made jams (that's a joke) with which to coat the flat surfaces of the artwork in order to give it depth & texture – much like hand painted oils. It was a short jump from there to begin accenting and embellishing the end result with acrylics -

The artwork represented the first time Motown images had been created at the hands of an insider, rather than at the mercy of photographers hired to come in and shoot their idea of what image the public should see.   Chris was commissioned to design a series on the Motown Artists by Hidden Dreams, a company run by Gordy's son, Berry Gordy 4th, then struck out on her own in August of '05.   Armed with photographs she'd taken during a two month trip to Africa in '90, Chris was able to generate enough of a body of work to attract the interest of collectors, as well as catch the eye of some performers on the current market who have begun to commission her work.   She currently resides in California.