Ray Kass
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Ray Kass | |
|---|---|
 Kass in 2020 | |
| Born | January 25, 1944 Rockville Centre, New York |
| Education | MFA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1969) |
| Known for | Mountain Lake Workshop, curatorial work, abstract painting |
Ray Kass (born 1944) is an American educator, curator, and painter. He is best known as the founder and director of the Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop, a collaborative art program in southwestern Virginia. Kass has organized major exhibitions, including Vision of the Inner Eye, a landmark exhibition on painter Morris Graves at the Whitney Museum,[1] as well as for his abstract paintings which combine watercolor, oil, and beeswax on rag paper [2][3][4][5]
Kass was born in Rockville Centre, New York on January 25, 1944,the son of the American folk artist, Jacob James Kass and Juliette Van Den Langenbergh.[6][7] He earned a BA in Philosophy in 1967 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969.[8] He was introduced to watercolors and painting outdoors by Keith Crown during a summer study at UNC in 1967. He began his teaching career at Humboldt State College (1969–71), continuing at the University of New Hampshire (1972), Keene State College (1975), and at Virginia Tech from 1976 until his retirement as emeritus professor in 2003.[9]
Mountain Lake Workshop
In 1980 Kass established the Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop programs, through which he brought art-world luminaries—including Clement Greenberg, Donald Kuspit, Howard Finster, and John Cage—to Virginia and the Southeast. The workshops were held at the Mountain Lake Lodge outside of Blacksburg and affiliated with Virginia Tech. An interdisciplinary program brought together artists, critics, musicians, and scholars to explore art collaboratively and philosophically. Over its nearly four-decade history the program included a wide breadth of participants including conceptual artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, sculptor Anthony Caro, photographer Sally Mann and street artist James De La Vega, among others, engaging in projects that emphasized chance, collective creativity, and dialogue with nature rather than commercial or political concerns. It was during these workshops that Ray Kass first introduced John Cage to watercolor painting, leading the two to experiment with densely marked paper towels used for testing brushes and pigments. These sheets were later archived, and from them emerged the series now known as the Zen Ox-Herding Pictures.[10] The Mountain Lake Symposium and Workshop: Art in Locale[11] documents the program’s history and philosophy, highlighting its commitment to interdisciplinarity, community-based art creation, and the exploration of shared cultural values beyond contemporary art trends.[12][13]