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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

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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"

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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

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2002              Martha Gault Art Scholarship                   Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, USA

                      *Award in visual arts

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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

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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

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2003          "East Meets East"                                Gallery 164, Slippery Rock, PA, USA

                                                                             Photograph

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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​

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2002        SRU Student Show                                Poznan Academy of Fine Arts, Poznan, Poland

                                                                             *Works shown: "Fan and Body"

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2002       Annual Juried Show                               Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA

                                                                              *Works shown 1: "White Window"

                                                                              *Second Place Award

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                                                                                        *Works shown  2:  "Number 6"                     

                                                                                        *Honorable Mention Award

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2002       Eco-Art  Show                                                 McCousky Center, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA

                                                                                        *Works shown:"Abandoned"​

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2002       The Hoyt Show                                                  Hoyt Institute of Art, New Castle, Pennsylvania, USA

                                                                                           *Works shown:"Abandoned"

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2001      Annual Juried Show                                       Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, USA

                                                                                      Works Shown:"Sarasota Dream"

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​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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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