Kohava Ray
Education:
2000-2003 Bachelor of Fine Arts Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, USA
Major in Arts Specializing in photography and visual arts
2002-2003 Exchange Rotation Scholarship Poznan Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan, Poland
Major in Arts Specializing in plastic arts and photography
1998-2000 Associate Degree in Arts Kansai Gaidai College, Osaka, Japan
Major in English
Awards and Honors
2002 Spring Portfolio Review Program Amity Art Foundation
First Place Award: "Number Five"
2003 Graduated with Distinction (cum laude) Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, USA
*Deans List (2001, 2002, 2003)
*Major QPA: 4.0/4.0
*Overall:3.8/4.0
2002 Martha Gault Art Scholarship Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, USA
*Award in visual arts
2002 J. Craig Art Scholarship Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, USA
*Award in visual arts
2000 Martha Gault Art Scholarship Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, USA
*Award in visual arts
2000 Graduated with Distinction (cum laude) Kansai Gaidai College, Osaka, Japan
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2009 "Connect I Cut" Gallery Moda di Hamano, Kyoto, Japan
Photopoetry
2003 "East Meets East" Gallery 164, Slippery Rock, PA, USA
Photograph
Group Exhibition
2009 "Garden of August" Bistro Tsukian, Kyoto, Japan
Photopoetry
2003 Annual Juried Show Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania,PA, USA
*Works shown: "Crossed Forms"
*Second Place Award
*Primary Work selected for SRU Mosaic Concert
2002 SRU Student Show Poznan Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan, Poland
*Works shown: "Fan and Body"
2002 Annual Juried Show Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA
*Works shown 1: "White Window"
*Second Place Award
*Works shown 2: "Number 6"
*Honorable Mention Award
2002 Eco-Art Show McCousky Center, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA
*Works shown:"Abandoned"
2002 The Hoyt Show Hoyt Institute of Art, New Castle, Pennsylvania, USA
*Works shown:"Abandoned"
2001 Annual Juried Show Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA
Works Shown:"Sarasota Dream"
About my name
My name is Kohava Ray. Kohava means star in Hebrew. Since my partner is Jewish and being attracted to the Hebrew ancient sound, I borrowed it for my artist name. So Kohava Ray gives birth to the beams of stars or sunshine, and I wish my works will be a ray of shining hope in a vast global darkness.
I also hope that these rays may be a door for an oncoming flow of light filled with joy.
The ways I have chosen to express Kohava's ideas are photographs, photopoems, picture-poems, collages, short recordings, drawings, paintings and mixed media.
What Kohava Ray Sees
She has a highly unusual original vision.
What she does is to dissect time and space by taking the hidden-in-plain sight aspects of everyday events and images, isolating their strange and surreal beauty from the banality of the whole.
She will take a tree moving in the wind and capture only the stems of many leaves at a point and time without reference to other components of the scene. We see these green stalks engaged in a sinuous dance in mid-air not knowing where they came from or where they are going. Ultimately, we perceive it is not a dream and react with surprise to what we are seeing.
In another image we see a strange pattern. A vortex retreating downward into an dark, forbidden and perfectly circular chasm. A thousand imaginings later we learn that this is the horn of an ancient gramophone with a record en faite.
As she waits for a train, people and events do not simply pass. Instead a cellphone flashes by with animated eyes dancing next to it, dangling bells dangle alone, and a classroom full of childrens' hats float, like a school of fish, down the platform.
Kohava does not simply use an umbrella in a night-dark forest. Instead she inverts the intent of the umbrella and sees it as a device to stop the darkness. In her world the umbrella is a window which blocks only the dark and admits the residual light of the forest. She uses it to see the otherwise invisible night insects flying around her.
The result is that we see things we never dreamed were there, and in the end we see the whole more completely than we thought possible.