Join us Thursday, October 13 from 6:30-7:30 pm, for the second annual Ray Johnson (un)birthday celebration live on Zoom. This annual gathering of Ray Johnson fans and friends is held on or around Ray’s birthday to honor his life and art. (We know… he’d love to hate this!) Special guests this year include: John Walter, director of the award winning Ray Johnson biopic How to Draw a Bunny (2002), and Ellen Levy, Ray Johnson scholar and author of A Book About Ray (MIT press, 2024) and Criminal Ingenuity: Moore, Cornell, Ashbery, and the Struggle Between the Arts (Oxford, 2011). If you haven’t yet seen How to Draw a Bunny, please view the film prior to the meeting. If you’d like to attend please send us your name and email, and we will add you to our Ray Johnson list. An email with the meeting link will be sent to your email on the day of the meeting.
To join the meeting on 10/13 click on the link 5-10 minutes before the meeting begins at 6:30 pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89349872028 For questions please contact Book Beat at 248-968-1190.
How to Draw a Bunny (dir: John Walter, 2002) from BASEBALZAC on Vimeo.
Ray Johnson photo by Bill Wilson
Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was a singular artist, for whom life and work were inextricably linked. Born in Detroit, Johnson attended Black Mountain College before moving to New York, where his work anticipated Pop art and he was active in early Fluxus circles. Best known for his collages and Mail art activities, including his New York Correspondence School, he operated fluidly in a wide range of modes. For Johnson, everything and everyone were potential material for his art—any form could become a space for artistic activity—and the form of the interview proved no exception.
For more on and about Ray Johnson, visit the Ray Johnson Estate.
Last year’s Ray Johnson (un)birthday featured several mail artists and can be seen on youtube.
That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson brings together a selection of eleven interviews and conversations from 1963 to 1987 that offer unique access to Johnson’s distinctive thinking and working methods. These materials, which include exhibition ephemera, an oral history, radio transcripts, and magazine articles, are marked throughout by his humor and close attention to language. Gathering these exchanges for the first time, That Was the Answer serves as an exceptional introduction to Ray Johnson as well as a resource for those who are interested in gaining deeper insight into the artist and his kaleidoscopic body of work. Copies are available at Book Beat or online at Bookshop.com
Julie Thomson is an independent scholar and curator who has been researching and writing about the artist Ray Johnson since 2006. She is the editor of the compilation: That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson and is also interested in photography, Black Mountain College, and artists associated with Fluxus. Her writing has appeared in Black Mountain College Studies, the Independent Weekly, Raw Vision, and Art Lies. She was born and raised in Michigan and now lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Yay! Really enjoyed last year, please add me!