Literally and figuratively haunting – the iconic MOAH Cedar building in Lancaster, Calif., itself is said to have a resident ghost or two – Joy Ray’s gorgeous, ghostly, somber, yet uplifting exhibition A mirror with breath like stone possesses the viewer’s spirit.
Filling all three gallery spaces in the building, transparent archival images cover the windows; strangely broken words cast a spell on black textiles; heirlooms culled from Lancaster’s history archives are displayed in cases; and wavering black banners trail ceiling to ground with images and words that compel close viewing.
Ray has often had an interest in the spiritual and otherworldly, using tactile materials and often textile. Here, that interest is allowed to fully express itself in an entirely immersive setting that can’t help but move viewers and hijack the soul as she elegantly offers the spectral its full due.
Using textile sculptures that resemble gravestones, she depicts historic news from the Antelope Valley Ledger-Gazette, adding layers of charcoal and sand in “Spectres,” in which fabric on armature shapes these suspended, eerie worlds and words. Other works, less floatingly ephemeral, are created from paint, twine, and fiberfill on fabric with impressions from the newspaper’s front page, such as in “longtime companion” and “to dream, to fall.”
Her “hall of shadows, hall of mirrors” is created from silk modal, utilizing markings from historic microfilm the artist poured over to uncover. There are hand painted words, sentences spoken by voices of the past.
The glass plate images on the gallery windows include photographs of families and children such as those shown in “Lancaster Hotel New Year’s Day.”
In another gallery room, the lustrous, long-gone landscape of an undeveloped Antelope Valley is represented with “Lancaster looking toward ‘Old Baldy’ after a heavy snowstorm” covers the existing view. Masking and utilizing the shifting light through the gallery windows is an inspired element of the show, casting a mysterious light and illuminating, literally and figuratively, the haunting past. The entire exhibition is cast in a sepia light, adding to the honestly transfixing nature of experiencing the artist’s works. Perhaps it is the power of ghostly attraction, or most likely, the alchemic miracle of her art. Audio tracks such as 1922’s “I’m Gonna Get You” by Mamie Smith and Her Jazz Hounds and other thematically edited musical riffs support the immersivity of the exhibition and add an additional layer of experience.
Joy Ray, like the spectres and shapes, history, hopes, loss, and small miracles of the past that she depicts, is a force to be reckoned with. This is a major show that captures the brevity, fragility, and enduring nature of human life – and the eternal of the great hereafter.
MOAH Cedar is located at 44857 Lancaster Blvd. in Lancaster. The exhibition runs through November 19.
Opening October 9th, and closing on Halloween, it’s only right that Joy Ray should offer new works with a beautifully haunting theme – Ghost Visions.
“I think of ghosts as a kind of ambassador to an unseen world,” Ray says. “This could be an actual ghost, or a dream, premonition, or intuition, one of those moments of strangeness that makes us aware of the fact we’re surrounded by the mysterious at all times.”
Ray’s work often brings elements of mystery, magic, and portent. This show is a foray into new materials and approach. Her work has always been highly textural, merging paint and textile elements, including elements of half-hidden text, and moving beyond paper or canvas into layers of additional mediums. But this show explores farther.
According to Ray “This idea of the mysterious came to me in a couple of different ways. I see this show as a kind of controlled lab experiment, one that invites a participation into the unknown world. One of the ways I get at this are through materials.”
This exhibition features a number of materials Ray purchased at thrift stores. “They have a past life, and I don’t know what that past life is,” she explains. “Do these materials, these garments, carry with them hints of what their former life was? I think they do.”
She selected old jeans as her primary fabric. “I read somewhere [that] at any given point of time 50% of the world’s population is wearing jeans. They are kind of a universal garment in a way; they’re pretty intimate and a beautiful fabric to work with. We also have a kind of love/hate relationship with them.”
Along with the fabric Ray uses in Ghost Visions, she is also featuring sculptures that “involve rusted metal and metal. I create the metal piece and the conditions in which it can rest, and I start and stop the rest of the process. Something else is really controlling it from there.” Otherworldly, indeed. She adds “That is the mysterious coming in, it’s a process in which it collaborates with me, so that the textures, and colors, it’s all a collaboration I suppose. I can see that mysteriousness coming to me.”
Her standing, rectangular “Ghost Signatures” series, which comprises one part of the upcoming exhibition looks like the phantom scrawl of a ghost, both art and a form of text that is unreadable to most humans. Excitingly kinetic, they are different that other, past work of Ray’s.
She compares the process in creating them to “almost like reading tea leaves. There’s a ritual and process involved. You make the tea, you pour it in the cup, and at the end, there’s just the tea leaves left. You are kind of left to make something of that, perhaps a message in them, or perhaps they are just tea leaves. It’s up to you.”
She feels as if she is “creating a space in which these ‘perhaps messages’ can come through and then we can see what we can glean from those.”
To the viewer they evoke memories of ocean waves, or half-heard words on staticky radios, or the soft shadowed touch of a hand while drifting into sleep. And they also resemble a conversation that is not quite intelligible but real nonetheless – as if comprised of a completely different language outside intellectual understanding but rooted in the spiritual.
“Creating these smaller metal pieces took place in part through an MFA program I am doing at the Chicago School of the Arts Institute. I was there for six weeks, and I got to experiment with their amazing equipment, which lent itself to the creation of the smaller pieces,” she relates.
Having worked with the idea of string, she dropped it into the shape of cursive handwriting that “looks like writing but is not readable.” She then took photographs of the string in that shape, and cut these images into the metal pieces using a CMT plasma cutter.
“It’s a different process for me. In thinking about it, going from the string, a simple material that I love, on that is kind of a mid-century, very basic American material, and converting it to steel that shows the absence of the that string through the cut out, the absence spoke to me.” She says “I’m not quite sure that any of it means yet, but there is an echo. The absence of the string is kind of like the ghost of the string.”
Each piece is approximately 4 x 11” and the patterns are cut into the steel. She plans to position them in the back gallery at Shockboxx, “with the lights out, and back-lit so they kind of flow – at least that is my plan,” she attests.
Ray has approximately 40 of the small metal sculptures in the show, and approximately 15 mixed media paintings. Among the latter are works that include elliptical text, such as “Lost Transmission,” and “Relic,” as well as the geometric patterns on works such as “Seen Not Seen” in which it appears text could reside but is temporarily absent, which echoes her metal work process.
Also included in the show is a series of works which are influenced by Ray’s drop cloths. “The spaces that inspired this work have in a way gotten small and more intimate. When I make paintings, I work flat on the ground on a drop cloth. I noticed that when I was painting, I was making two paintings – the incidental marks on the drop cloth that had a cool energy to them, and the painting itself. And I thought what if I intentionally make those marks on canvas, the marks taken from the incidental marks on my drop cloths and turn them into the focus of my art intentionally. In this way,” she notes, “the work represents my surroundings as interpreted by my little drop cloth on the floor.”
Ray reveals that she is interested to see how these drop-cloth pieces are seen by viewers. “I think the next work I’ll be doing will be pulled in that direction. I think the drop cloth is in a way my studio in a suitcase, which creates more intimacy in my work, but perhaps it’s a smaller focus that’s more universal.”
While in the past Ray has focused on the Hawaiian iconography that reflects her home for at least part of the year, this work changes things up. However, she notes “There are some through lines. I’m very influenced by previous work in that way, but this is less rooted in the islands.”
She describes Ghost Visions as “Experimental and playful. Despite the dark color palette that I tend to gravitate toward, there’s a kind of playfulness to this body of work that’s a little newer to me. I think being a part of the MFA process encouraged experimentation.”
Ray asserts that she views this body of work as “the beginning of something really exciting, the first step on a really exciting road. I don’t know where it is going to lead yet.”
Perhaps, into other worlds.
The exhibition will be opening at Shockboxx October 8th; the in-person reception will be on the 9th starting at 6 p.m. An artist talk with critic and curator Shana Nys Dambrot will take place during the shows run; that event will be virtual and include a seasonally appropriate discussion of ghost stories, tarot, Ouija boards, and ghost signatures.
Shockboxx is located at 636 Cypress Ave. in Hermosa Beach, Calif.
With three fine solo shows and one group show, the Los Angeles Art Associations Gallery 825’s current exhibitions, which opened February 22nd, are each deeply rewarding.
Suzanne Pratt
Suzanne Pratt’s exhibit bird·song, which is profoundly meditative, focusing on the transitory yet eternal in the immediate moment. The precise but seeming infinite images weave a complexity rooted in a primal sense of life-force. Spirals, shell-like shapes, seemingly-petaled pieces such as the artist’s richly dimensional “niyamita,” compel a closer look at the world itself as filled with meaning. Dimensional and riveting.
L. Aviva Diamond
L. Aviva Diamond’s large-scale photography also offers a dazzle of meditative works – these riveting works depict water as an entire world – in her glowing Light Stream. Euphoric and filled with a swirling dance that pulls the viewer within them, these sensational abstract images transport the viewer to another world that is both mysterious and magical.
Mark Indig
Photographer Mark Indig uses architectural shapes in his new body of photographic work, Naked Triangles. Skeletal and powerful, described as “x-rays of our culture,” radio towers and cell phone transmitters are depicted with grace, as stark, lovely, and spare, like castle turrets and church steeples for our time. Electric wires and their connection points stand like robotic sentinels, watchfully ominous. The delicacy of their construction reminds the viewer of the art of Watts Towers at first glance; a second look creates a less benign view, as if of a technological take-over.
Osceola Refetoff
And finally, the group show on exhibit, Penumbra, juried by stARTup Art Fair’s
founder Ray Beldner, offers black and white as the palette in a variety of
mediums. Participating artists include Larry Brownstein, Amy Fox, Donna
Gough, Rob Grad, Gina Herrera, Susan Lasch
Krevitt, Campbell Laird, Rich Lanet, Colleen Otcasek, Joy
Ray, Osceola Refetoff, Melissa Reischman, Catherine
Ruane, Seda Saar, Catherine Singer and Stephanie Sydney.
Catherine Ruane
From Catherine Ruane’s lushly nuanced nature in her graphite drawing “Magwitch” to Osceola Refetoff’s haunting infrared photographic sunset image of “Leaving Trona,” to Joy Ray’s mystical, textural wall sculpture, this is another rewarding powerhouse of a show.
Don’t miss!
Genie Davis; photos provided by the artists; exhibition photos from LAAA
Artist Joy Ray wants viewers to know that she’s “kind of obsessed with the end of the world. Everything seems a bit precarious right now, and I find myself thinking: what if it all goes sideways?”
If it does, the deep, lush, and highly sculptural works in her new Postapocalyptic Petroglyphs series, set to debut September 7th at Launch LA, will at least prepare viewers for the end of days with beauty and grace.
She relates “This stuff is pretty dark, but I’ve been thinking lately that it’s also optimistic: the desire to leave a mark indicates a faith that there will be someone around left to find it, to care.”
Works that she categorizes as artifacts, talismans, portals, and hieroglyphs are their own mysteries, each alluring, somewhat enigmatic, and magical.
“In my new body of work, I merge paint and textiles to create what I think of as mysterious artifacts from the end – or maybe the rebirth – of civilization. I explore how visual communication might be used in dire situations: to communicate covertly with others, to communicate with the gods, casting spells, or as a way of documenting history,” she says.
Ray’s work has evolved over the years from an artistic journey that began with what she calls “typical embroidery materials: hoops, self-made patterns, traditional stitches. But I started feeling like this was too rational, methodical and slow. I wanted to incorporate spontaneity, speed, and emotion into textile/fiber art.” With that in mind, she created her own vocabulary of stitches and began incorporating mixed media materials such as paint, plaster, sand, paper, chalk, “even burnt toast. Hand-sewing and fiber materials remain a central component of my work, but I think of what I do now as ‘textile paintings.’”
She creates work that is both intellectually and materially dense. According to Ray, “I’m very interested in creating 2D works that have a sculptural, physical quality. Lately I’ve been mixing construction sand with house paint to ‘concretize’ my canvasses, then deconstructing and reconstructing them to resemble hides. I use roving (loose wool) and bulky yarn to make patterns and symbols. I paint over the top of those with layers of thick gel mediums.”
The layering itself feels fused with tension and seems to represent an exposure of an almost geological slice of the soul. Perhaps it does.
“There’s something really terrifying and liberating about spending dozens of hours hand-sewing something, only to paint over the top of it,” Ray notes.
While each work is densely layered, the artist paints in minimal colors, still shaping a complete emotional palette. Ray explains “Like Pierre Soulages, I’m drawn to black, plus grayscale and a bit of red. This is both an aesthetic preference, a nod to the punk/goth aesthetic I grew up with, and a way to access the intuitive state in which I seek to work. I’m very interested in the role of chaos and accident and intuition in artmaking, like Brion Gysin and the automatic embroidery of Jeanne Tripier.”
A resident of both the Big Island of Hawaii and Los Angeles, it is not the vivid flora and fauna of either location that speak through her art, but rather the “stark and volcanic” landscape of parts of the Big Island. “Large areas are uninhabited, covered with old lava flows. When the Kilauea volcano was erupting last year, I found myself thinking a lot about what lies beneath the old flows, what communities and lives have been buried over the centuries,” Ray attests. “I’m fascinated that while the ground beneath our feet seems stable, actually it’s just a thin shell over a cauldron of magma that can burst out at any time. It speaks to the power of things that are unseen, lying just below the surface.”
The power of the unseen is what viewers may feel in viewing Ray’s current work. There is something both alchemic and tribal in her approach and in the finished works. There appear to be layers within layers, not just texturally, but with elliptical meaning seething just out of reach, ready to emerge in the fullness of time.
“What influences me most about living on the Big Island are depth and layers, hidden energetic forces and latent destruction. Just because we can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there,” she relates.
Ray’s self-described interest in secret worlds, the archeological, and even the occult is an outgrowth of what she calls her long-standing fascination with mysterious things, including lost languages, secret societies, cults, and ancient ruins.
“There are petroglyphs all over the Big Island, but no one is really sure what they mean, or why they were made. It’s so interesting to think about dreams, the afterlife, ghost stories, magic—are these real? It’s not always possible to know the truth,” she says. “I love the feeling of existing in the presence of mystery.”
And that is a presence Ray herself shapes, an alluring one to viewers, and one that will be visible in upcoming exhibitions throughout Los Angeles.
Ray will be sharing the exciting two-artist exhibition Beyond/Within at Launch LA with Samuelle Richardson; also ahead are New School Abstract, at Shockboxx in Hermosa Beach; and Art Under Cover: A Top Secret Art Show at Shoebox Projects, Los Angeles.
