Earth | Process | Product: Carolyn Ray Combines Art and Industry

Awash in the light that streams in through the windows lining her soaring loft space, Carolyn Ray gazes pensively at a swath of fabric imprinted with hyper-realistic images of flowers. Representing the latest stage in the ongoing evolution of her eponymous hand-painted fabric and wallpaper company, this cloth bears a digital design based on painstaking photographic documentation of the hundreds of natural artifacts stored here-on shelves, tucked into drawers, and hung from rafters. Ray must now decide if the fabric will retain its representational character or metamorphose into one of her signature “layered and powdery textured” fabrics.

Large fans keep the air moving in the 19^th-century mill space located in Yonkers, New York, just over the hill from the Hudson River.But the women bustling about the space this summer-four full-timers and a battery of freelancers, apprentices and interns who come here to learn wallpaper and fabric-making while assisting Ray-are taking additional measures to stay cool. Their ad-hoc efforts, just like their work-related tasks, bear testimony to the creative intelligence coursing through them-they’ve turned fabric scraps into temporary halter tops, wrapped their necks in water-soaked bandanas, and even doused their heads at the wash-out sink, a converted bathtub used for rinsing silk screens and brushes..

‘The girls of Carolyn Ray’, as they are affectionately labeled by the men who staff other entrepreneurial enterprises housed in the same brick building, are all artists who are “close to the earth, close to the product, and close to the process,” says Ray. “Their pursuits here are all about the sweat, the tears, and the toil.”

The hands-on character of the operation enables close contact with reps and designers all around the world and a vital flow of information concerning their markets.

“The beauty of our operation is we can go and get feedback during the development phase of a product,” says Ray. “We can make a strike-off here one day, and on the next I can take it to L.A., and if someone wants, say, 20 yards, we can make it the next week. The results can be immediate.”

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Every design at Carolyn Ray is based on one of her own inspirations, something she has drawn, painted or picked up, perhaps a rock or a bunch of flowers. But the development of her ideas are impacted by her staff members whose input she avidly solicits in regular staff meetings. Ray is particularly open to experimenting with media that are the specialties of students who come to work for her through her internship program.

She speaks animatedly about those whose talents have led to new product releases: “A graduate student who once worked here, Noelle Mills, was cutting a block for her thesis project, which inspired us to use her technique and a block she cut for a new design.

My longest collaboration has been with artist Louise Newsome who was a decorative painter,” Ray continues. “Louise created all the tools for the combination of techniques we used to hand paint our Landscape Panels, nine-foot-high panels inspired by old murky trompe l’oeil wall murals. My very newest intern, Julie Stephenson, is adept at digital CAD work and spent several months photographing my artifacts, which we then put directly into a repeat.”

Perhaps Ray is so open to the wisdom of students-they often return to work full-time for her-because of her early forays into teaching and the translation of her own painterly sensibilities into textile art. “I have a graduate degree in painting from Tyler,” she says, “but as an undergrad student at Skidmore I experimented with transparent inks on big fabric tables; the surface design teacher had retired and I became a TA.”

During her second year of graduate school she taught kids in Philadelphia how to print on yardage as part of a workshop program at Prints in Progress, and then went on to teach classes in fabric printing as an artist-in-residence at the University of Massachusetts.

Afterwards, she returned to Philadelphia, moved into a 4000 sq. ft. loft with a $100 monthly rent, and co-founded The Fabric Workshop with Marion Stroud, teaching fine artists how to use fabric as a medium. “I reached the point where I had taught so many people how to do this that I thought that perhaps I should do create fabric designs for a living. I had a painting show scheduled for a year later and began creating four-yard paintings on fabric for it.” For the show, she sewed them together and hung them from the ceiling of the gallery to shape a mini 12×12 house. “The components were called ‘art-by-the-yard’ and you could cut out any 4-yard piece you wanted,” says Ray.

At the suggestion of one of the attendees, the four-yard paintings eventually ended up in a New York gallery called Groundworks. Pat Green, the owner, who represented other fabric artists such as Maya Romanoff, sold the pieces as standalone art works. The 4-yard concept went by the wayside when Bloomingdale’s placed an order for 20 yards. “As they say, the rest is history,” says Ray. “I had to quickly figure out how to create formulas, prototypes and reproductions.” In 1978, four yards morphed into 20 yards and now, 30 years later, Ray is fielding interest for her wares from designers all over the globe-from China and Russia to Saudi Arabia and Switzerland.

“My ambition is to work internationally and spread our wings, from both an aesthetic standpoint and as a company,” says Ray. “That means working with end users in foreign companies to help them produce on site as well as bringing designers, students, and artists from abroad over here to work with us.”

Ray also hopes to reduce the environmental impact of her wares. “My fabrics are spot on because we use water-based inks for those,” she says, “but the wallpapers, which are very complex, involve solvents.” However low her environmental footprint becomes, her impact on textile and wallpaper design, and on interior spaces and careers, is likely to grow ever bigger.

Check out Decorati’s picks to complement Carolyn Ray’s Snap Wallcovering below.

DECORATI’S PICKS TO COMPLEMENT RAY’S SNAP WALLCOVERING
Lamp by McGuire	Bed by Ted Boerner
Nightstand by Powell & Bonnell	Chair by James Duncan Collections

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Check out Catching Up With Carolyn Ray in Decorati’s Founder’s Blog.

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