Ray Jorgenson is an interdisciplinary artist from the East Coast and currently based in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago occupies the homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: The Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe Nations and the Ho’Chunk, Meskwaki, Sauk, and Miami Nations. Ray began their career in analytical chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Pivoting from those studies, they graduated from Lesley University with a Bachelors in Liberal Arts, specializing in Art Therapy. They are continuing their training, currently pursuing a Masters of Art Therapy and Counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As an interdisciplinary artist, Ray works with a variety of mediums, including fiber, drawing, and artists’ books. Their work has been shown in the exhibition “Coming Home” in Marran Gallery in Cambridge, MA.
Uncovering - Faster, 2025, recycled clothing, jute, thread, 10.7 x 8.5 in
Uncovering 1, 2025, recycled clothing, zipper, 11 x 12.5 in
Uncovering 2, 2025, recycled clothing, zipper, polyester trim
As an artist-art therapist, art serves as both the method of inquiry and location of understanding of the world around me and my place within it. My work explores the external and the internal, translating and transposing between them. I react to, respond, and interpret visual phenomena as well as my internal world. I am a process-oriented artist concerned with slow and time intensive approaches. I am inspired by materials, by creating and solving compositional problems, and the organic lines of the natural world. I engage with these with hand processes that require extreme focus and delicate care. I am sustained by curiosity about materials and the ways they represent broader experiences of myself and of the world around me.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I am sustained by curiosity and persistence. I work across and between mediums, most often within the spaces of book and fiber arts. My work includes two and three-dimensional pieces with both abstract and representational subject matter. The contrast, saturation, texture, and variety possible within fiber processes invites infinite possibility. Whether stitched onto a sheet of paper, across the leaves of a book, or woven across a frame, my work with fiber arises from an intuitive place. With paper, the material becomes the medium through sculpture and alteration. My book works are simultaneously iterative series and singular space as they translate an internal experience into a visible object.