Ray Kass

Ray Kass (born January 25, 1944) is an American artist whose paintings, both abstract and representational, are inspired by nature. Some works are quite literal in the way they depict recognizable landscapes; others capture nature’s inner qualities, such as structure in land and cloud formations, and movement in water.Patterson, Tom, “Virginia Artist Captures the Power and Movement of Water in Show at SECCA,” review of /ACCOUNTS exhibition at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem Journal (29 June 1988) p.E4. His work has often been called transcendental or romantic because his painted images, "almost uncontrollably expressive”,Kuspit, Donald B., Ray Kass: Images of the Winged Earth, brochure essay for the exhibition “Ray Kass: Images of the Winged Earth,” Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA, 1994. present the essence of nature through its energy.Talbott, Susan Lubowsky, exhibition brochure essay, “Ray Kass, Drawing in Place,” (Winston-Salem, N.C., Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, 1997)
== Early Life, Education and Teaching Career ==
Kass was born in Rockville Centre, New York on January 25, 1944 to Juliette Van den Langenbergh and Jacob Kass, a commercial truck painter and letterer, who became a late-life painter on saws and other hand tools. The younger Kass attended Baldwin High School (Baldwin, New York)|Baldwin High School in Nassau County, New York|Nassua County, New York, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned a BA in Philosophy in 1967 and an Master of Fine Arts|MFA in painting and art criticism in 1969. He was introduced to watercolors and painting outdoors by Keith Crown during a summer study at UNC in 1967. By 1969 Kass had also begun his teaching career at Humboldt State College (1969-71), continuing at the University of New Hampshire (1972), Keene State College (1975), and at Virginia Tech from 1976 until his retirement as emeritus professor in 2003.
== Methods and Techniques ==
For most of his career, Kass’ principal medium has been watercolor on paper. This spontaneous medium facilitated his prolific output and also the characteristic boldness of his brushwork. He has produced Plein air|plein-air representational landscapes as well as larger, well more abstracted works, derived from nature but painted in the studio, in which his signature style evokes forms and forces in nature. The more abstracted works often combine watercolor with oil emulsion, dry pigments, and/or unusual surface treatments such as “distressed” or “smoked” paper.Ryan, Dinah, “Ron Johnson and Ray Kass,” exhibition review of works at the Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA, Art Papers (May/June 2012), p.53. His presentation of finished works sometimes utilized canvas-mounted paper before stretching, but more often he has mounted the painted work on paper directly onto rigid primed wood panels especially designed for the purpose. Kass also developed methods for painting continuous imagery in a single painting to traverse multiple panels. These polyptychs allowed him to extend the scale of a painting to 30 feet or more.Crutchfield, Margo A., ”Ray Kass,” catalogue essay for the artist’s exhibition at the Moss Art Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 2018. At the suggestion of Morris Graves, Kass has commonly used beeswax, applied to his paintings’ surfaces while heated, and then carefully scraped off to leave only a thin sheen of wax as a final protective layer,Weinstein, Ann, “Floods of Color,” review of the exhibition at Osuna Gallery, Wash. D.C., in the Roanoke Times and World News (05 February 1984), p.E-4. which also functions as visual enrichment for the surfaces. Kass described this effect to the critic Donald Kuspit|Donald B. Kuspit as “fusing multiple watercolor layers into a uniform surface”. During the period 1983 – 1990, when Kass worked with the composer John Cage, he began to be influenced by Cage’s use of indeterminacy to introduce random painting processes and visual elements into his own work.
== Published Curatorial Activities ==
From 1977 to 2017 Kass undertook, often through collaboration, a series of curatorial projects. With Jonathan Williams (poet)|Jonathan Williams, he organized a large exhibition of contemporary southern photography, “I Shall Save One Land Unvisited,” which opened in 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art|Corcoran Gallery, Wash. D.C., and after traveling extensively, closed at the International Center of Photography|International Center for Photography in New York. In 1983, he curated an exhibition of works entitled “Morris Graves: Vision of the Inner Eye,” for the The Phillips Collection|Phillips Collection, Wash. D.C. With Julia Boyd he organized the exhibition “John Cage/New River Watercolors” for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Together with Stephen Addiss, he assembled the works “John Cage: Zen Ox-Herding Pictures,” in 2009 for exhibition at the University Museums at the University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia|Richmond, VA, and subsequent national tour. In 2012, with Marshall N. Price, he co-curated “The Sight of Silence: John Cage’s Watercolors,” for the National Academy Museum in New York. Finally, in 2017, he co-curated with Alexander Grabiec and Rachel Tenant Ivers, the exhibition "Rural Avant Garde: The Mountain Lake Experience,” for the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts in Farmville, Virginia, and co-edited the accompanying publication, The Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop: Art in Locale, with Howard Risatti.
== The Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop ==
In 1980, Kass founded the Mountain Lake Symposium, which consisted of annual criticism conferences in the fall and spring and, separately, after 1983, a series of collaborative, community-based projects to make art. Both the symposia and workshops usually convened at the Mountain Lake Hotel (Virginia)|Mountain Lake Hotel and the nearby Miles C. Horton Sr. Research Center and Studio in Giles County, Virginia. For the symposia, the art critic Donald Kuspit|Donald B. Kuspit served as Kass’ advisor from 1980-1983, after which Kass and art historian Howard Risatti co-directed these events. Each year the symposium invited professional scholars, critics, designers and artists to discuss pertinent current issues in art and art criticism as a panel assembled before an audience, or to lead workshop critiques and participate in collaborative, community-based workshops.
Category:1944 births
Category:American artists
Category:People from Rockville Centre, New York