WHITEHOT

“Ray composes coarse terrains imprinted with illegible, but not insignificant, information [that ask] the viewer to reconsider the relationship between mark-making and memory and, more abstractly, what is lost and what is gained of clarity, mystery, and experience.”

LA WEEKLY

“A punk and tribal goth is expressed in her rough symphonies of black pigments whose diverse textures variegate the canvases. The prominence of hand-stitching as a form of mark-making in Ray’s compositions highlights the aspects of her practice most engaged with the art and cultural history of textile, even as these marks reference coded, extraterrestrial and/or ancient pictographic languages.”

RIOT MATERIAL

“Ray’s work here evokes the tribal, the ancients, and the volcanic lava of her part-time residence on Hawaii’s Big Island; it is a landscape, an ancient testament, all raw physicality containing an almost seething sense of mystery and hidden meaning…The work merges paint and textiles into a form of secret communication, whether that communication is the casting of enchantments or serving as a record of the past, the language of another planet, or the words of our distant past.”

DIVERSIONS LA

“Dark and experimental, Ghost Visions is also experiential – viewers could enjoy a haunted moment or two contemplating each work. The exhibition is also playful, an invitation into another realm.”

LA WEEKLY

“ART PICK: an evocative and haunting collision of black and white paint, burying hints of letters, words and other vestiges of communication under a seemingly random splatter of entropic plaster.”

ARTILLERY

“The pairing of Richardson’s gorgeous fabric sculptures of birds and faces with Ray’s dark, vital abstracts was a joy.”

ART & CAKE

“Joy Ray’s current body of work–“Post-Apocalyptic Petroglyphs”–might have been excavated from ancient indigenous sites. With spirals, bars, crosses, and squares, Ray’s oeuvre deploys primal abstract forms much like the thousands of rock art images etched into volcanic stone…Tapies, Burri and Twombly stand as potent predecessors for Ray.”

DIVERSIONS LA

“The deep, lush, and highly sculptural works prepare viewers for the end of days with beauty and grace…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.”

EDWARD GOLDMAN

“Sophisticated work. It tells a story which is bigger than the piece. This kind of work makes me want to touch it with my hands. I feel text and books influencing her.”

SHANA NYS DAMBROT

“Joy Ray’s alchemical, masonic process layers pigment and sand on rough textile, along with rusted metal and laid-in wool, punk rock flavored needlework and the linear, almost pictographic scars of cross-stitch. A dark romance of haute punk and tribal goth is expressed in the symphonics of black pigments.”

BETTY ANN BROWN

“Joy Ray takes the mud and dust that John Ruskin speaks of and translates them into lyrical images of light emerging from darkness.”

SHAYLA M. ALARIE

“An absolute architect when it comes to textural composition, but what I love most about her work is that it reads like emotional archeology. If one could excavate human energies, this is what it would look like.”

New York Times: Textile Artists Bring New Life to an 18th-Century Building

The Art Newspaper: Fibre Art Celebrated in Pop-up New York Show

Hyperallergic: Fiber Art is the Binding Thread at This Manhattan Show

Harper’s Magazine: Monday Gallery (May 6, 2024)

Colossal: ‘The Golden Thread’ Traces the Rise of Textiles in Contemporary Art

Untapped New York: Fiber Art Exhibit Takes Over Historic Seaport Building

Art Spiel: The Golden Thread: BravinLee Offsite at The Seaportcoll

whitehot: Joy Ray’s Duplicated Spirits

LA Weekly: Meet Mixed Media Painter Joy Rayhaper

Diversions LA: Joy Ray Haunts in Ghost Visions

Diversions LA: Joy Ray Will Conjure the Other Worldly

The Living Artist Podcast: Interview with Joy Ray