Rex Ray

    The artwork of San Francisco graphic designer Rex Ray has become a prolific mediation on the abstract and dynamic nature of fluid forms. Begun at night simply as a personal and therapeutic visual antidote to his highly self-edited, computer-based commercial work during the day, his art projects (small-scale paintings and collages now numbering in the thousands) came from humble origins; scissors, paste and fashion magazines. Ray brings an unusually tight sense of craft and precision to the compositions of these smallish, highly colourful, and always-playful artworks. 

Discolaria

     The result is a fusion of art and design sensibilities. Biomorphic-, teardrop-, and nature-based forms comprise the bulk of Ray's vocabulary, and paintings such as 'The New Water' appear to have been created mid-drip. Its immediate communication of the joy of movement is balanced against its momentarily arrested state; the delight of composing just for the sake of composing is immediately apparent. Ray creates forms of indeterminate origins-familiar but not identifiable-that offer the viewer a sense of spontaneous liberation. The question is not why Ray does such things, but why most other graphic designers and painters do not.

                                 Aephilae

     A San Francisco native, Rex Ray is an acclaimed graphic artist whose visual works include paintings, collages, prints and photographs. Ray’s recent work employs 1950s-styled organic shapes inspired by Pucci designs. His posters are characterized by intense, jewel-like colours, and their stylistic variety reflect his ability to adapt lettering, sly symbolism, portrait art and free-hand drawing to unique artists and music.

                                 Psoromasyl

     For Rex Ray, the joy of making and viewing art is his continuing motivation. Drawing inspiration from his acknowledged influences of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Abstract Expressionism, organic and hard-edged abstraction, pattern and textile design, and Op Art, Ray playfully combines these formalist concepts with decorators tips gleaned from lowbrow publications and sources of popular culture in his pursuit to create beautiful things. Gracefully bridging the gap between fine and applied art, he distinguishes himself in each realm.

 Fuscopanaria

     Ray’s work exudes beauty with a subversive edge that stems from an attitude grounded in alternative subculture. He was an early admirer of punk and new wave music. Music holds a special place in his life. A former record store employee and devoted collector, he has worked with leading contemporary musicians, contributing designs for many album covers and concert posters for artists such as Radiohead, Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, Deee-Lite, and David Bowie.

Erioderma                                         

     In the art world, design is a troublesome concept: purists will tell you that design is too close to "real life," too "utilitarian" to adorn a gallery's walls. Rex Ray, who's also well known for his graphic design work, is that rare artist who manages to maintain credibility with both his commercial and his gallery projects. He has an uncommon facility with visual balance and slightly barbed beauty, which are in full evidence in this expansive solo exhibition. 

 

     The centrepiece of the shows is usually a wall covered with dozens of collages. These modest works on paper are composed of images and text (surgeon general's warnings, splashy headlines) from glossy magazines that have been cut into ovals, squares, and vaguely atomic-age shapes and arranged into mesmerizing and pattern-intensive abstractions. The fact that these are recycled from the finished product of graphic designers for mass media magazines adds a sly irony to the project. 

Nelastrus

 

 

     Elsewhere, Ray displays paintings that employ similarly 1950's-styled organic shapes and collaged elements that sometimes bring to mind early paintings by Lari Pittman, another artist with designer roots. The electric quality of his paintings bears some relationship to the artist's use of digital media -- another hot button in the art world -- well illustrated with a suite of luscious computer-generated prints that exude the almost cosmological glamour of a rain-soaked street reflecting coloured city lights. Like many of his works, they reveal that Ray may blur boundaries between media, but he can seemingly effortlessly squeeze out images with a universal appeal.

Telecenesis                                 

     Rex Ray was born in Germany in 1956. He lives and works in San Francisco’s Mission District. Before moving to California in 1981, he was a long time resident of Colorado Springs and he still maintains his connection to Colorado. In 1988, he received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute, CA. As an accomplished and award-winning graphic artist, Ray has produced distinctive and striking designs for books, magazines, posters, and compact disc covers, including recent projects for Steven Spielberg and David Bowie. 

                                Parmotrema

     His paintings, collages, and designs have been widely exhibited at galleries and museums, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. He is an accomplished graphic designer with a client list that includes Apple, Sony Music, and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. In 2009, Ray’s work was exhibited in a solo show at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver and was the subject of a full length PBS Documentary “How to Make a Rex Ray”. Ray’s rock poster work was featured in the exhibition of The Art of Design at SFMOMA.

Thelidium                                     

                                  Anzia

Xantodermia                                   

Rex Ray

Jodi Colella

In the Beginning

    “My work references the biological world, uses found and manufactured materials, and incorporates a methodical and meditative work practice.

I create structures that can act as metaphors for being human often taking on anthropomorphic gestures and emotions. I want to inspire questions about where an individual ends and the world begins.

     Found fishing ropes morph into nerve capillaries, tubes of screen congregate
into honeycomb, and wool grows from the crevices of driftwood - as if creating new species. It is my goal to engage - to create a physical attraction that beckons
one to want to touch and BE touched by what they see.”

                                                  Jodi Colella

Hive

 

     Jodi Colella is a mixed media sculptor and teacher who explore the character of the materials while creating abstractions of natural forms and transforming ordinary materials into the unexpected. Her nimble mind and nimble fingers have produced an array of compelling sculptures. She uses traditional crafting techniques such as crochet, knitting, felting and embroidery to create structures that are anything but traditional. The needle felted and found driftwood sculptures pictured here mimic organic patterns found in science.

Diana                                         Colony

     The artist, who has a degree in Biology from Boston University was originally a researcher at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, but did not feel the career was the right fit for her. She got a certificate in Graphic Design in 2000, and worked in the field for a while before she gave that up to pursue her own art. Colella describes herself as an intuitive artist, and trusts that intuition implicitly.

Receptor                                            Nuclei I

     Humans are tactile beings. Our fingers seem to be drawn to materials, be they smooth as silk or rough as bark. Jodi Colella's fingers have a restless curiosity, not content to let the transformative potential of materials they touch lie dormant. A Somerville-based fiber artist who's as fascinated by her process as she is by its outcome, Colella sees the bizarre and enticing capabilities of the substances she works with. "I'm very curious about materials," she says. "Just playing with them to find their qualities. Usually they do unexpected things."

Seeds

     Her inquisitiveness comes in part from a love of nature's building blocks. "Aesthetically, I have always loved cellular forms. In fact, if you look at my notebooks from back then," she laughs, referring to her days studying biology at BU, "I didn't write too much information, but I had all the images." Seeds and Nucleus are recent works of Colella's that evokes biological forms but are rooted in textile traditions too. She experimented with needle felting (a method of transforming wool fleece into felt), creating dysmorphic orbs of burred fuzziness and vivid layers of color. The process signified concentrated potential, each needle prick a compacting of Colella's own energy into the "seed."

Epithelia                                             Lichen

 

     Colella first encountered traditional textile methods like felting and knitting during summers at her grandparents' home on Cape Cod. "I was brought up always working with my hands," notes the former graphic designer, "and I've always loved doing that. So I think that's where I start, and then hopefully it goes somewhere else." While fleece is a conventional material, Colella's fingers often reach for things that stretch the definition of fiber, such as window screen that she's used to make Undercurrent, a work about barriers and duplicity.

     

Undercurrent

     Like many artists in our creative environs she wears many hats. She teaches at the deCordova museum in Lincoln, Mass, working with students with fiber art and sculptural jewelery. As a teacher, she helps students develop their art, from fiber to sculptural jewelery. Patience, she says, is the key. "It's very difficult to be in the position of trying to figure something out but you can't. And to have somebody show you, or indicate a way that you can figure it out yourself that makes you feel good is really important. There's just a level of fulfillment there in people sharing with you, you sharing with people." It's easy to imagine a student of Colella's catching her fervour for experimenting with materials. "Very often," she says, eyes twinkling, "you get these surprises that are nothing you would ever dream of. That's what I love about it."

Marrow                                                  Blast

 

     Jodi Colella shapes constructions that mimic the patterns of science while observing the inherent character of materials, transforming them from the ordinary to the unexpected. The results are both beautiful and full of contradictions, monumental and delicate, organic and man made. Jodi's work has exhibited nationally in museums and galleries winning several awards including from The Textile Center Minneapolis, New Fibers 2010 and will be included in "GREEN: a Color and a Cause" at The Textile Museum in Washington D.C.

What Looks Like an Elephant                    /detail/

Nuclei III

Mushroomed                                              /detail/

Jodi Colella