Ray Beldner
Born: 1961
Hometown: San Francisco
Based in: Sutter Creek, CA
Ray Beldner is a sculptor and mixed media artist whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and can be found in many public and private collections including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and the Federal Reserve Board, Washington D.C., 21c Museum, Kentucky, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Oakland Museum of California, and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others.
Born in San Francisco, Beldner received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Mills College. He has received numerous awards and fellowships including a California Arts Council Fellowship in New Genres, a Creative Work Fund Grant from the Haas Foundations, and a Potrero Nuevo environmental art grant. He has taught sculpture, interdisciplinary studies, and professional practices at the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, and University of California, Santa Cruz.
His work has been reviewed in publications including Art in America, Arte, Art On Paper, Artweek, Wired, Playboy, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.
26 works for sale
Ray Beldner In The Studio
""If collage is a juxtaposition of different forms and ideas, recontextualized to create a new whole, then I would assert that all art is collage.""
More About Ray Beldner
What inspires you?
I am inspired by artists and art history. The colors, forms, shapes, and textures in a well executed Renaissance painting or a Modernist sculpture are part of my artistic palette.
Describe your creative process.
These works are made by appropriating images of iconic artworks from different historic periods that I mine from books, auction catalogs, and magazines. I select specific parts that draw me to their shapes, colors and textures. I cut, arrange and rearrange, playing with their complimentary and contrasting attributes and create surprising, lyrical and visually confounding new compositions.
What are 3 words that best describe your work?
Playful, active, colorful
Who are some artists that have influenced your work?
Frank Stella, Brice Marden, Jean Arp, Lynda Benglis
What is the most important tool when creating your work?
My cutting tools are very important: scissors, exacto knives, scalpel. Those and good glue!
What is the best piece of advice you have been given?
Do not be satisfied with a pretty discovery. Destroy the thing. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, you transform it and make it more substantial.
Where do you go for inspiration?
Galleries and museums. Hikes out in nature. Good literature.
Credentials
Education
Mills College
United States of America, 1989
San Francisco Art Institute
United States of America, 1986
Exhibitions
Cut and Paste. Repeat.
2022
A Journey Through Abstract Reciprocal Perspectives from the Terrestrial to the Architectonic Orbital
2021
Depicting Duchamp: Portraits of Marcel Duchamp
2020
Ray Beldner: Shaped Collages
2019
Education
Mills College
United States of America, 1989
San Francisco Art Institute
United States of America, 1986
Exhibitions
Cut and Paste. Repeat.
2022
A Journey Through Abstract Reciprocal Perspectives from the Terrestrial to the Architectonic Orbital
2021
Depicting Duchamp: Portraits of Marcel Duchamp
2020
Ray Beldner: Shaped Collages
2019
For Trade