Marion Gray (September 14, 1934,
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
– September 2, 2016,
Mission District, San Francisco) was an American artist, photographer, and teacher. A vital member of the Bay Area art scene since the 1970s, Gray's "work blurs the lines between documentation and art, and exposes shared approaches between artists working in dance, performance and visual arts." During her long career, Gray documented the performances and works of artists such as
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...
,
Christo and Jeanne Claude
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific art, site-specific environmental art, environmental art i ...
,
Merce Cunningham,
Joan Jonas,
Marina Abramovic,
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording ...
,
Paul Dresher
Paul Joseph Dresher (born January 8, 1951 in Los Angeles) is an American composer. Dresher received his B.A. in music from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. in composition from the University of California, San Diego, where he st ...
,
Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within t ...
, and many others. As curator Christina Linden explains: "her photographs, themselves powerful works of art, constitute an immensely valuable archive of the ephemeral artistic activity the Bay Area has historically fostered.”
Education and early work
In 1975 Gray completed her studies at the University of California, Berkeley in Art History and Art Practice. She studied with
Peter Selz,
Jim Melchert
James Frederick Melchert (December 2, 1930 – June 1, 2023) was an American artist best known for his ceramics and sculptures.
Education
After earning an AB in art history from Princeton in 1952, he moved to Japan where he taught English for ...
,
Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic cr ...
, and
Joan Brown
Joan Brown (born Joan Vivien Beatty; February 13, 1938 – October 26, 1990) was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California. She was a member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.Glu ...
.
It was during her final year that Gray attended a lecture by the artists
Christo and Jeanne Claude
Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific art, site-specific environmental art, environmental art i ...
who were discussing their upcoming project for Marin and Sonoma counties, the "
Running Fence." She was hired to work with the Christos on the project in 1976. The project proved to be the beginning of her career, as she documented the "Running Fence," using still and moving cameras.
Career
During her 40 year career, Gray developed a unique archive of work which captured historic and often one-time performances by some of the most important artists of the Bay Area and beyond.
As ''Photograph Magazine'' states, "Gray’s position in these pictures is active; she treats each shot as if she were an art-world photojournalist. The best works seem almost collaborative, in that the photographer harnesses the energy of the artists and works she depicts."
Publications and exhibitions
Gray's work has appeared in various magazines and books including ''Art in America, Art Forum, Leonardo Music Journal, High Performance, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945 to 1980,'' and ''Woman in Technology 2003,'' as well as both group and solo shows.
Exhibits include the San Francisco Art Institute "Marion Gray/Photographs of Actual Art," the Performing Arts Library and Museum, "In Performance – Tapestry," and "Resounding Works" at the Jazzova Sekce Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic.
In 2015 the
Oakland Museum of California had a retrospective on Gray's work called ''Within The Light.'' The exhibition focused "on California artists (
Terry Fox
Terrance Stanley Fox (July 28, 1958 June 28, 1981) was a Canadian athlete, humanitarian, and cancer research activist. In 1980, with one leg having been amputated due to cancer, he embarked on an east-to-west cross-Canada run to raise money ...
, Darryl Sapien, Robert Arneson,
Survival Research Laboratories
Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) is an American performance art group that pioneered the genre of large-scale machine performance. Founded in 1978 by Mark Pauline, the group is known in particular for their performances where custom-built mac ...
, William Wiley,
Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a Mexican/Chicano performance artist, writer, activist, and educator. Gómez-Peña has created work in multiple media, including performance art, experimental radio, video, photography and installation art. His fifteen b ...
, Jim Melchert, Bonnie Ora Sherk,
Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy (born 1959 in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada) is a San Francisco-based dancer, choreographer, and performance artist regarded as a pioneer of queer and AIDS-themed performance. He is known for non-linear performance collages that combine ...
) and nationally acclaimed artists that have performed in the Bay Area (
Ann Hamilton,
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording ...
, Marina Abramovic and Ulay,
Merce Cunningham,
Eiko and Koma,
Karen Finley
Karen Finley (born 1956) is an American performance artist, musician and poet. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, ...
)."
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gray, Marion
American women photographers
University of California, Berkeley alumni
1934 births
2016 deaths
21st-century American women