About

ARTIST'S STATEMENT: I’ve long been captivated by stories of my ancestors—both my early Mormon ancestors and my queer/trans ancestors. My work comes out of an ongoing rummage through what I inherited—everything from histories to belief systems; from body language to memorabilia. What mythologies guide, or haunt, our lives—either knowingly, or unknowingly? I see these ancestral figurines as ghosts who inhabit my world, but ghosts I can pick up and play with.

BIO: Ray Farmer is an American artist (British/German ancestry) raised in Utah and currently based in Brooklyn. They earned an MFA degree in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and work in a variety of media, including hand-built ceramic sculpture, installation, photography and video. They currently have work on view in the exhibition Connected To The Land at Granary Arts, on view through January 17, 2025. Other recent exhibitions include A Greater Utah at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art; and Ceramics Now at Jane Hartsook Gallery (NYC), featuring work by the four fellowship/resident artists at Greenwich House Pottery in 2021. Previous residencies include Space on Ryder Farm (2019), the Museum of Arts & Design (2016), and Brush Creek Arts (2014). In 2013, they were awarded an A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, that culminated in a solo exhibition. Additional solo exhibitions include site-specific installations for Granary Arts (UT, 2018) and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (NYC, 2017).

Group exhibitions include Material Issues: Strategies in Twenty-First Century Craft at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Expanded Visions: Fifty Years of Collecting at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, Beyond the Bed Covers curated by Laura Petrovich-Cheney (A.I.R. Gallery, NY), Torn and Fired: new work in collage and clay curated by Jason Andrew (Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn), Illegitimate and Herstorical, curated by Every Ocean Hughes (A.I.R. Gallery, NY), #throwbackthursday / #flashbackfriday, juried by Scott Chasse and Hrag Vartanian (Calico, NY), and Land + Place + Performance, curated by Laura Allred Hurtado (Granary Arts, UT).

INSTAGRAM: @rayrfarmer

NOTE: All ceramic sculptures are made from unglazed stoneware clay. Standing figures are between 5-6 inches tall. Please get in touch for more detailed information.