Rex Ray
Beyond design inspirations. The story of Rex Ray.
In the late fall I attended an art quilt workshop in Tahoe with Pat Pauly to learn printing fabric with thickened dyes. I was energized by at the possibilities of creating fabric backgrounds using this process. After returning home, I was looking at simple design shapes that I could use through a silk screen with thickened dye and hand cut stencils. I gathered referenced images on several Pinterest boards.
My first thought was to search for Marimekko fabrics. Their aesthetic includes bright colors and large simplified shapes and their core business is fabric. I also looked for designs from the 1950’s. Somewhere along the way I started saving images that I collected in a board called curves and found myself drawn to a single artist “Rex Ray”.
I was immediately attracted to his graphic style, the juxtaposition of color and pattern. It had a retro feeling, without the kitsch. I wasn’t sure of his process, but was drawn to the way he arranged shapes and patterns in a composition. I felt sure that his design style would be a launching point for my printed fabrics.
Rex Ray was an army brat who’s family ended up in Colorado Springs. He moved so much he never really felt at home. He wasn’t a great student but always loved art.
The Springs is a City an hour south of Denver with a large military and retired military population. It is the home of the Air Force Academy. In the late 70’s and early 80’s the city became a beacon for the evangelical movement. I remember that period in Colorado. At the time I was living in liberal Boulder and the Springs was becoming known for it’s ultra conservative views.
Rex Ray was the “nom de plume” in the world of mail art for Michael Patterson. He used color xerox to make collages that he shared with artists beyond his community. Interestingly he got the name randomly from the logo of an appliance sold at the Rexall Drug Store. In Colorado worked at a record store and participated in a few exhibitions.
*Eventually Patterson legally changed his name to Rex Ray. He said that becoming Rex Ray allowed him to cut off from himself what was not his true nature.
The Art Mail community which birthed Rex Ray, began in the very early days of the pop art movement in New York. Its founding member was Ray Johnson, a collage artist who began the “New York Correspondence School” as a kind of performance art project. It was popular enough to label Johnson as New York's most famous unknown artist.
Collage School, New York, 1963 Ray Johnson.
Mail art is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works by mail. Mail art includes postcards, paper, a collage of found or recycled images and objects, rubber stamps, hand carved stamps, and other media. The movement is ongoing and serves as a connection point between artists and circumvents the formal display spaces in the art world.
Rex Ray left the conservative city in 1981 in his car and drove to San Francisco where found a job at Tower Records. Eventually he applied for the Art Institute in the city. After graduation he fell into jobs as a graphic designer in the early days of the PC. He created concert posters, album and book covers using digital tools. He worked with famous musicians including Davie Bowie.
It was during this period where he spent his days on a computer he returned to his apartment and made small physical collages out of paper in the evenings. In a PBS video titled “How to Make a Rex Ray” he describes these colleges as his disciplined art practice. He made five a day and stored them in a cardboard bankers box.
Over time these little paper collages led Rex to create more work that used papers he hand printed. He scaled up the work and mounted them on a wood subsurface that could be easily hung and finished them with durable varnish. By the time he was in his forties he was selling in galleries and expanded into large scale pieces. He described his work as “painting” in order to avoid the complexities of trying to explain a process which did not fit into a specific category.
Photo of artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Published in the Denver Post
Sadly Rex Ray died after a five year battle with cancer in 2015. His work is held in the permanent collections of major museums including the MOMA in San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum, and San Jose Museum of Art.
I began thinking of Rex Ray’s work as resource ideas for backgrounds to place a figure on, but his influence has morphed into something beyond the artwork I have grown to love. After reading several articles, tributes after his death, and videos about him, I was struck by his story and realized the connections with my own lifelong creative practice.
Experiment with Hand Dyed Fabric Background, Figure
ART AS THERAPY:
As a child, Ray used art as a form of self soothing in a troubled household and during uncomfortable transitions. I find that many artists, including myself; begin a lifelong creative practice to help deal with their internal world. I believe this is because the right brain or visual brain, gives a respite to negative self talk, to an overheard argument that plays on repeat in the brain, or the cruel gossip in the school hallway that echos after the student returns home.
PROBLEM SOLVING:
Rex happened to enter the world of graphic design at a time when most in the profession were trained in an era before the personal computer. I also entered the workforce at that time and ended up as a data processing coordinator without any background in computer science. Because artists like Rex and me, are less likely to follow directions, we tend to dive in, and just figure stuff out. He attributed his success in that ability not let fear of making a mistake serve as a barrior.
As the art teacher I realized very early that my best artists often didn’t seem to be listening and were not the academic types. They learned on their terms. I entered the world of “art quilting” never actually learning how to quilt. I just dove in and figured out what I needed to know as I went along. It was a big experiment. My ignorance of the craft was a gift that has led me beyond the small niche of quilting and continues to help me to solve issues and develop my own processes.
BUILDING ON PAST EXPERIENCE:
When Rex Ray started to create his signature work in the artworld, he didn’t just drop graphic arts or duplicate what he had done in that arena. He built on a key concept in digital design: Layers of images. The process he created used hand printed paper layered and crisply hand cut shapes forming bold compositions. Ray created a physical replication of a digital process. His work is not unlike photoshop where flat objects are placed one on top of another to make a complex composition.
My early work started with collaging photo transfers. I built on that work by having these photographic images printed on yardage. Because I was a painter, I took out my brush and began painting instead of taking pieces of commercial fabric and fusing them to the surface. The art quilters were a little shocked. My attitude about media was if it worked on canvas or rag paper it would work on my art quilts. I never really abandoned any process I had learned or discarded an experience. Instead I built on the past and it has lead to a body of work that is uniquely mine.
Experiment with Hand Dyed Fabric Background, Figure
When I look for inspiration in the art world, it's always there in quantity. Not all the inspiration I get is from the visual output of an artist. It’s often their backstory that I take with me into the studio. The connection I feel with other creatives is a kind of magic. And that is why I share my “Backstories” with you.
Until next time………..
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I enjoyed learning about Rex Ray and how you incorporated your hand-printed fabrics an the graphics into your own work. Can't wait to see what comes next.