The Clays:

Corrigan, Shelley, Keziah, Zebedee, Woodelson, Jackson, & Ember

Corrigan & Shelley Clay are the founders
and directors of The Apparent Project.
They met at Seattle Pacific University in 1997. Corrigan was studying visual arts
and youth ministry while Shelley studied German and linguistics. The two graduated in 2000 and were married a week later. They moved to Germany in 2002 to work with Young Life as mentors and counselors to teens whose parents were soldiers involved in operation Enduring Freedom. Corrigan directed ministry in Bitburg, Germany (Shelley's birthplace) where Shelley played an administrative role until her pregnancy with their first child, Keziah. After Keziah's birth, the Clays moved to Heidelberg, Germany where Corrigan directed a larger eccumenical staff and their first son, Zebedee, was born.

In the Fall of 2006 The Clays moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Corrigan completed a Masters degree in Theology and the Arts at Regent College. During this time the Clays began to take notice of the two-thirds world as they initiated the adoption process for a boy named Woodelson from Cite' Soleil, Haiti.

After numerous visits, it became more and more difficult to leave Woodelson and Haiti behind as the Clays waited through the long adoption process. They moved to Haiti in 2008, establishing the Apparent Project as they went. The Clays became house parents for an orphanage of 24 boys, and in their first year began additional adoptions for Jackson (an abandoned baby boy who was dying in another orphanage due to food alergies) and Ember (an infant girl whose mother died shortly after giving birth to her in the slums near the orphanage where the Clays live).

The Clays moved out of the orphanage in the summer of 2009 to be better positioned to strengthen the foundations for the work of the Apparent Project. While continuing to nurture relationships with the boys at the first orphanage (a few blocks away), they are establishing the Apparent artisans workshop, pursuing a creche' license, and strengthening their bonds with their own children. Corrigan is also continuing to shoot videos for local missions and teaching art, design, film, and Bible classes at Quisqueya Christian School. He hopes that his current courses will allow him to develop the cross-cultural awareness, vocabulary, and curriculum that the workshop will require. Shelley is actively completing Montessori certification to equip her to better teach the children of working artisans and orphans at the creche'.

For more on the history of the Apparent Project, click here.

Corrigan's Arts & Theology website is located at www.throwing-clay.com

To contact the clays see our contacts page.