Ray Borchers

Born in Chicago, IL / Works in Chicago, IL

Multidisciplinary artist Ray Borchers employs a collage process in both sourcing of imagery and material application. Her paintings depicts ever-transforming dream-scapes, overflowing with a generous collection of familiar and unfamiliar symbols, shapes and bodies. Her dry humor luxuriates in a confident devotion to her DIY sensibility. Ray’s work has been exhibited worldwide in a variety of format including paintings, large-scale murals, t shirt designs, and album covers. The garments created by her clothing company, BOY NAMES, are comprised of Ray’s painted and printed textiles . Her musical project AITIS BAND is working on their fourth album. Ray received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The surgical, delineated, cut-out gesture of collage most informs my compositions. Printmaking, block printing in particular, is another process I apply to my paintings as well as the textiles of my clothing company, boy names. Both of these techniques have a static quality that allows for the layering, multiples and degradation of forms that I find so chaotic, playful, and violent all at once. My sound project, Aitis Band, creates in the same manner that I paint. We layer beat up on beat while sprinkling, sampling, and then blanketing each wave with texture. Post punk’s raw, earnest and unapologetic sensibility has heavily influenced my work. The expression or gurgitation of all that I have collected, subconsciously and consciously, is a flood, and seems to never slow.