Rex Ray is unexpected on so many different levels. He wields a pair of scissors like other artists grip a brush. With his bald head, chunky earring and gravely voice, it would be easy to get the wrong impression. But there is no Harley parked out back. He lives alone, likes to garden in his free time, his dog rules the house and he shrugs off critics who say his work is “too pretty” or “too influenced by design.” He has the confidence of a survivor – a man who has lived through a lot and come out the other side.

Rewind to 1981. Ray was living out of his car near Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco with only $75 to his name. Homeless and nearly broke, he talked his way into a job at Tower Records. But it would be months before he could scrape together enough cash to actually get an apartment. No big deal. Ray was used to adversity. His father walked out on him and his family when Ray was only 13. Dad went out to get a pack of cigarettes and never came back. “I know it’s a cliché,” says Ray, “but that’s what happened.”

Not surprisingly, the family struggled financially. Insult was added to injury when the Feds changed the rules for scholarship money. Even though his father had not contributed a dime in child support or any other kind of support, his father’s income would be counted on the application. That sealed the deal. There would be no more college scholarship money for Ray.  With few opportunities in his home state of Colorado, Ray headed west where he would settle in the City by the Bay, which was initially a tough place to be with no money and no friends. He would live through the terrifying beginning stages of the AIDS crisis when so many of his friends were dying, and no one knew what was killing them. That Ray found salvation in art is not all that surprising. But his art is.

There is no anger, angst or hidden psychological messages. If he has emotional scars they do not show in his art. The work is colorfully upbeat, optimistic and even whimsical. There is a lovely lack of pretense. Ray doesn’t ask you to “get it”  – he simply wants you to enjoy it.  He may be the happiest malcontent you will ever meet.

A self-described Army brat, Rex Ray was born Michael Patterson in 1956 on an American military base in Germany. He spent the first 13 years of his life moving from one base to another, before finally settling in Colorado Springs.  It was a lonely way to grow up, so Ray turned to art. “I remember painting a lot of Mondrian paintings in the second grade,” he says. “I was enamored with hard-edge abstraction. Then I went through a period where I was painting on black velvet, and finally in junior high and high school I went through a crafty phase. I supported myself by making little hash pipes and roach clips – creatively, though. I was a little entrepreneur.”

Ray tells the story of his childhood good naturedly, but making money was a necessity. After his dad split, cash was tight.  So Ray would make all his “crafty things,” which included everything from macramé to jewelry, and take them down to the Rustic Hills Mall. He’d set up his card table and sell. “I was completely unaware of what a violation it was, but the people at the mall took pity on me and let me get away with it,” he explains. Ray is irreverent and funny when he talks about this time in his life, but he acknowledges his dad leaving was devastating.

“Everything went to hell,” he says. “My grades went to hell, the family splintered, and the only thing I excelled at was art. I spent most of my time in the art studios and pretty much failed all my other classes. I graduated in the bottom five percent of my class, but I also took more art classes than any student there.” He found art, but in many ways lost his childhood. “It was a traumatic time,” he says. “I’m not sure it’s left me even today.”

After high school, Ray enrolled at the University of Colorado and settled into the local art scene, which was surprisingly sophisticated at the time. He got into what he calls “this mail art thing” – a network of artists that would make small artworks in multiples or small editions and mail them to each other. Michael Patterson also found his new identity. “Almost everyone involved in mail art operated under pseudonyms and I chose Rex Ray from an old vaporizer I bought in a junk store,” he explains.  “Rex Ray was the appliance division of Rexall Drugs and the logo was wonderful and futuristic, incorporating lightening bolts and movement. It was quite convenient to inhabit this ‘Rex Ray’ character and the name just stuck.” He was only able to go to school part time and he had to hold down two jobs to do it, but Ray says it was a “wonderful” experience.

But once again, just when he felt things might be going his way something happened to derail his progress. He lost his financial aid. He was forced to drop out of school, and quickly lost his direction. Without much going on for him in Colorado, Ray made the decision to head west almost on a whim. He just got in his car and started driving. “I slept in my car around Fisherman’s Wharf,” he says. “I was effectively homeless for about three months. I look back on that now and think I was out of mind, but I really didn’t know any better. I was very naïve.”

He survived the Oh-shit-what-have-I–done phase, and eventually got accepted at the San Francisco Art Institute. It was not what he expected. Unlike the family atmosphere that existed at the University of Colorado, the students at the institute were competitive and individualistic, and the art trends at the time were decidedly anti-beautiful. Drawing on his mail-art experience and fascination with Xerox machines, Ray was creating black-and-white encaustic paintings, which he wanted to be visually beautiful. “This stuff just went over like a lead balloon at the Art Institute. They just raked me relentlessly,” he says. Ray laughs now, but back then it was a tough time – inside and outside the studio.

San Francisco was ground zero for the AIDS crisis. “In retrospect it seems like a horrible dream and I think because I was so surrounded by it and consumed with taking care of people I never had a chance to fully understand what was actually happening,” he says. “But the experience certainly had an effect on my time at the San Francisco Art Institute since every action paled in comparison to what was happening around me.” Ray eventually dropped out just a few credits shy of a masters degree.

As with pretty much every setback in Ray’s life, he found a way to turn it into a positive. He got a job at the legendary City Lights bookstore started by Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, mainly because he hounded the managers. “I do have a tenacity where no is not an option,” he says. “I won’t accept it.”  It turned out to be an invaluable networking opportunity. Having done sporadic graphic design work since high school, Ray used the connections he made at City Lights to snag freelance work. “There was also enough going on in the subculture I was involved in – nightclubs, little record labels and bands – to sustain me,” Ray says. “I started doing nightclub flyers and little album covers. Anything that would pay me 40 bucks, I would do.”

And then along came David Bowie. The rocker saw a Rex Ray-designed poster and liked it enough to just call him up and ask if he wanted a job. “We worked on his website first, then came the album covers, then we collaborated on some fine-art prints,” Ray says. “We worked relatively closely for about five years.” It was a lucrative relationship that attracted more big names: music promoter Bill Graham Presents, Apple, City Lights Publishers, Crown Books, DreamWorks SKG, Sony Music and Warner Bros., just to name a few.  Ray was picking up high-profile clients and making good money, but something was missing. “It was actually the Bowie thing that made be strategize getting out of graphic design, because I didn’t want to be forever known as the guy who worked on David Bowie album covers.”

Ray went back to his roots. Every night after work, he would cut up magazines and make very simple collages. He would do 10 to 15 a night. It was almost akin to artistic stretching exercises. “I would make them as silly and simple as possible and turn off all those voices saying ‘it’s not good enough, you’re not good enough,’” he says. “I never had any intention of showing this work. It was purely for myself – a way to get me back to a creative place.” But then a funny thing happened. Ray was photographed in his studio for a magazine spread recognizing his design work. He had dozens of the small collages tacked up on the wall. The curator from the Yerba Buena Art Center saw the magazine and was infatuated with the collages. He gave Ray a spot in a group show.

“The response was great and I realized it was my way out of graphic design,” he says. Ray had found his direction, but taking the artist out of design proved easier than taking design out of the artist. Ray’s collages have gotten larger and more complex. He has abandoned the magazines as source material, opting instead for his own painted or hand-blocked printed-paper. Piles of it fill the back corner of his studio. Ray meticulously cuts out his shapes and literally builds his intricate collages layer by layer. Some of the big pieces will have as many as 15 layers before they are finished. They are clearly inspired by his design work.

“A lot of this imagery comes straight out of the computer, things I sort of worked out in graphic design projects and then they reappeared here,” he says. “It’s not like I think, ‘What did I do way back when?’ It’s only when I see it finished that I recognize the themes and shapes that have been with me forever.” If there is a rap on Ray, it’s that he is too influenced by design sensibilities. But he points that some of the greatest pop artists of the last century used patterns and shapes in repetition, Andy Warhol (one of Ray’s favorites) being the most obvious. And Ray says he’s never denied the influence. In fact, he embraces it.

Ray’s art is a combination of all of his experiences, from the crafts of his teenage years, to his rock n’roll graphics, to his computer-generated commercial work. It all plays a roll in the collages he creates today. But there is something else. The work also clearly shows, from an emotional standpoint, the man he is today. Life has not always been easy, but for all that he has been through, he has arrived at this point a happy man.

Ray’s work is selling. He lives in a nifty, little 15-unit live/work complex in the heart of San Francisco. He owns two units, using one for a studio and the other for living space. The complex is filled with artists, and on most days the doors are open, giving the whole place a communal feel. Ray’s dog, Skeeter, has the run of the place. “Sometimes I find her curled up on someone else’s bed,” he laughs. Ray takes care of the courtyard garden, saying he has just purchased 100 dahlia bulbs. It all seems a bit incongruent with his rebel-rocker look, but then again, so does his art.

“I do feel like my life is almost triumphant, from a lonely childhood to sleeping in my car to now,” he says. “There have been ups and downs, but it’s been an enjoyable ride and I’ve been way more successful than I ever thought I would be. (It’s) really quite remarkable.” And then Ray smiles. “I feel lucky and blessed to do what I do. I don’t think I could ever get a real job anywhere. I’m way to feral for that.”

Written By: Erin Clark
ARTWORKS Magazine – Summer 2008