Ray, Margo

Margo Ray is a contemporary artist whose interdisciplinary practice includes collage, animation and installation. Her work explores print beyond the traditional matrix of 2-D printmaking into the realms of installation that incorporate various print processes. She holds an MFA in Print Media from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and a BA in Studio Arts from University of Hawaii at Hilo. She has also studied art in Beijing, China and has travelled extensively to the South Pacific, Vietnam, Peru and Western Europe, places that have visibly influenced her art practice
In my work I have evolved an iconic language inspired by Hawaiian Ranching culture, where the ‘wild west‘ of American myth is here pushed to the edge of westward expansion. Utilizing collage, print media, sculpture and animation I create surreal compositions using the allegory of landscape that integrate drawn and photographic images of animals, plants, explosions, comets and airplanes. In them I explore notions of displacement, vulnerability and authenticity as well as my relationship to natural and super natural worlds; drawing attention to the complicated triangulation of relationships between man, land, and animal and the notions of freedom, domestication and prey.
Recent exhibitions and projects include: Between Worlds, Waters Flow at The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center, Sublime Spaces, Forgotten Places at The Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA and Splendid Isolation at the Parisian Laundry in Montreal, QC. Margo has also been awarded The Emerging Artist Residency Grant at Atelier D’Ille in Val-David, Quebec, Artist in Residence at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California and most recently Visiting Artist in Residence at St. Michael’s Print shop in St. John’s Newfoundland. Her work is also part of the permanent collections of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture in the Arts for their Arts in Public Places and the Biblioteque National du Quebec Artist Book Collection.
Margo Ray currently lives and practices in Honoka’a Hawai’i, and is co-owner, of Ironwood Custom Framing and Design in Kamuela, Hawaii.