Start Up Art Fair San Francisco 2018 Hotel Del Sol April 27-29, 2018
Joy Ray makes abstract drawings with thread, chalk, and other materials. Employing simple, elemental materials in a refined, earthy palette, she seeks to transcend the limitations of spoken language – and yet her lexicon of marks, symbols, lines, and insistent gestures organize themselves into schematic,linguistic, picto-grammatical, cartographic compositions. As though translating cave paintings intohand-drawn codes, Ray has a neo-primitive take on modernism, in which communication is reduced to its basics, yet continues to function. Executed on an intimate scale, the hanging tails of some threads, the tactility of the canvas, and the shadows cast by embroidery reading like impasto, the works have more physicality than one expects from drawings, yet have everything in common with drawing and writing. Joy Ray lives and works in Kailua Kona, Hawaii.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018 Site-specific installation: Semaphoria, Los Angeles CA
2017 Site-specific installation: Flags of unseen nations, Santa Monica CA
Site-specific installation: Signal and noise, Sonoma CA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2018 NAWA Gallery: Small Works Exhibition, New York NY
Studio C Gallery: Red Hot Wicked 2, Los Angeles CA
2017 Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art: Hawaii Contemporary Arts Exhibit 2017, Hilo HI
Hawaii Island Art Alliance: 2nd Annual Contemporary Craft Juried Exhibition, Hilo HI
Shoebox Projects: Off the Wall, Small Works Exhibition, Los Angeles CA
SDA: Small Works: SDA at 40, Portland OR
AWARDS
2017 Honorable Mention, Conceptual Category, Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art: Hawaii
Contemporary Arts Exhibit 2017, Hilo HI (Juror: Patricia Salmon)
Honorable Mention, Hawaii Island Art Alliance: 2nd Annual Contemporary Craft Juried Exhibition,
Hilo HI (Juror: Mark Mitsuda)
EDUCATION
Sarah Lawrence College, BA
Sarah Lawrence in Florence, Italy
RESIDENCIES & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
2017 Donkey Mill Art Center: Kipaipai, Holualoa HI, with Andi Campognone, Betty Ann Brown,
Shana Nys Dambrot, Merry Akane Karnowsky, James Panozzo
COLLECTIONS
Works held in private collections in California, New York, Washington and Hawaii
Upholstered chair, collection of Jonathan Lasker, New York