Hayden Clay Williams is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY, working across 3D art and photography to explore feel-good surrealism through simple natural themes such as water, clouds, light… with the aim of blurring the line between dreams and reality and evoking a sense of strange tranquility. A photographer-turned-digital artist, he began shooting on his phone as a teenager before moving to a real camera and eventually falling for film photography, drawn to the possibilities of multiple exposures. That sensibility still shapes his process today: every 3D piece begins as a hand-drawn sketch before being built out as a digital environment, with an eye toward calm, immersive atmospheres stripped of extraneous detail. Drawing inspiration from dreamlike worlds like Studio Ghibli films and the Final Fantasy games of his youth, his work carries a sense of childlike wonder and adventure, filtered through a more mature, contemplative lens. His series, "World Underwater," born from a journey to Venice, Italy, confronts the urgent reality of climate change. In this series, Hayden envisions a world submerged, encouraging us to contemplate the consequences of rising sea levels. Through his dreamy yet poignant imagery, he becomes a vocal advocate, sparking conversations and driving awareness about the pressing environmental issues of our time.

His work has been exhibited in Seoul and New York and he was featured in Colossal, It's Nice That, Designboom, Fubiz, and DesignWanted, and profiled by MPB and Urth Magazine, and he was among the early wave of digital artists to find validation and community in the NFT space.