WATCHING/WAITING

April 2023 • Gearbox Gallery, Oakland CA • with Christine Ferrouge

ARTIST STATEMENT

Joy Ray's delicate weavings test the very limits of fragility, investigating what it means for things to be held together, barely – “coming apart at the seams.” Ray lived for several years near a mountain lake that would lightly freeze in the winter, creating a tempting hazard for curious snowplayers. Inspired by this, her monochromatic weavings suggest hairline cracks in semi-frozen ice, a subtle yet ominous reminder of the precarity of the natural world.