Compound Art for All Workshop

Heirloom Collage with Fay Ray

Art for All is a series of free hands-on workshops at Compound that teach various artistic mediums and encourages new ways of making art that’s fun and engaging for the family.

In Heirloom Collage, Fay Ray will lead workshop attendees in creating a self-portrait with polaroid pictures taken by Fay. Using black and white imagery to build around their portrait, attendees will have an opportunity to create heirloom artworks while exploring contrast and texture using monochromatic materials.

About Fay Ray: Fay Ray received her MFA from Columbia University and her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include The Soraya Art Gallery, California State University Northridge, Northridge, CA; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Louis B James Gallery, New York, NY; JOAN, Los Angeles, CA; and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA. Ray’s special projects and installations have been featured at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills and New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA; and L.A.N.D. (Los Angeles Nomadic Division). Group exhibitions include Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris; The Mistake Room, Los Angeles and Mexico City; Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, CA; Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; among others. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Palm Springs Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of art. Ray’s works have been reviewed by Artforum, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, New York Magazine, Brooklyn Rail, Riot Material, Wallpaper*, and Issue Magazine.

Los Angeles-based artist Fay Ray explores the fetishization of objects and the construction of female identity through high-contrast, monochrome photomontages and metallic sculpture. For her three-dimensional works, Fay Ray compiles cast aluminum objects, bored volcanic rocks, wire, chain, and natural materials into suspended sculptural masses. Conflating worlds of worship and desire, the works across mediums borrow from the symbolism and composition of traditional religious relics and the visual language of the occult. Ray’s sculptures and collages hint at the presence of a rematerialized body through a mysterious yet systematic organization of abstract form.

Image credit: Fay Ray, Mirror Lens Future Crested, 2024, in PORTALS, MOCA Tucson 2024. Photograph by Maya Hawk, copyright © MOCA Tucson, 2024.