SHRAY
At age fifteen, Shray discovered the Greek sculpture, Winged Victory, at the Louvre in Paris and declared to her mother that she was to become a sculptor.
She began her formal classical training with a full scholarship at the Academy of Art in San Francisco and continued her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute with a full grant.
For eight years, Shray mentored with Italy's Piero Mussi, founder of the internationally renowned Artworks Foundry.
Shray intensively studied the work of Rodin in Paris. It has been said of her work that it, "falls between Rodin on the more natural end, and Giacometti and Moore on the more abstract, more universal end." Her simplicity of form has been compared to Brancusi. Over the past 25 years, Shray’s work has received both national and international recognition in the form of awards and commissions. Her abstract work, Balance Struck II, took top honors at the revered 104-year old organization, the Allied Artists of America in the 2018-2019 Competition in Sculpture. Shray’s bronze sculpture, "Raising Tomorrow’s Olympic Champions" was juried to travel throughout China and the world as the winner of the Excellent Works Award by the Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games. Based on the success of this juried exhibition, Shray became the recipient of the 5 Rings Award at the Olympic Sculpture competition award ceremony hosted by the Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
An intuitive artist, Shray’s art never appears labored or forced. "While I work, I am able to see geometrically while recognizing a sense of humanity pushing towards abstraction." Shray balances the figurative and the abstract without losing human emotion.''
Technique
Shray is one of the few working sculptors today who employs the rare Subtractionist technique. Like Michelangelo, who released the human form in stone, Shray unveils her forms in blocks of clay. Through the lost wax process, her forms come to life in bronze. Great care is taken in the creation of each limited edition bronze. Shray feels that before she will put her name on the bronze sculpture, it must be perfect.
Forevermore
bronze
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