Fay Ray

Fay Ray engages with natural forms and industrial materials in her work, creating artworks that heighten our experience of these materials and the environments that surround us. Her work for Candlewood, Scorpion/Scorpio/Scorpius, is a trio of related site-specific installations that inhabited Galleta Meadows, incorporating metal and glass elements in balance and tension inspired by Ricardo Breceda’s Scorpion and Grasshopper sculptures.

To extend her project into different media, Ray commissioned poet Claressinka Anderson and experimental musician and vocalist Danielle Birrittella to create Songs of the Scorpion, a three-song operatic cycle for voice, cello, and viola performed during the Festival at the outdoor amphitheater at Borrego Springs County Park.

Fay Ray was born in Riverside, California and lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work explores the fetishization of objects and their role in constructing notions of femininity, conflating worlds of worship and desire across mediums. Ray received her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2002, and her MFA from Columbia University in 2005

She has exhibited at galleries within the US and internationally, including Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles; Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris; Louis B James Gallery, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; JOAN, Los Angeles; and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills and New York, among others.
 

Fay Ray, Scorpion/Scorpio/Scorpius, 2020, site-specific installation commissioned by the Under the Sun Foundation for the 2020 Candlewood Arts Festival, GalletaMeadows, Borrego Springs, California. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo: PanicStudio LA.