4:46
Claire Elizabeth Barratt performing at the 2018 (Re)Happening through Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center.
Credit Matt Peiken | BPR News
Claire Elizabeth Barratt once drove alone from Asheville to Albuquerque, N.M.—26 straight hours—without stopping except for gas.
“I’m actually thinking of maybe doing a cross-country trip as a durational performance,” she said. “Just doing the whole I-40 coast to coast and calling that the performance.”
That view of her art—at times defying conventional boundaries of time, space and even audience—is among the traits stamping Barratt as a solo performance artist unlike any other in this region. She’s a dancer without a company, a sculpture without a pedestal. She might wrap herself in paper, plastic or holiday lighting or project images or video onto her body.