Donna Ray
Donna Ray is a visually-impaired ceramist. Art has been an important part of her growth, feeding her soul since her birth in 1961. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1999. Since then she has been working simultaneously as an employee for the Veterans Hospital in Minneapolis and as a full-time emerging ceramic artist located in Bloomington, Minnesota. She is a studio artist at the Northern Clay Center & Community Artist at The Workshop, located in South Minneapolis. Presently she is working on a body of work for the Fearless Artist curator Cohort-4 exhibition at the Miami Basel to be held November 30, through December 4 in Miami, Florida. In her spare time, she writes monthly articles called Donna’s Corner for the Minnesota Women Ceramics Newsletter. She has worked on two public art projects, Black Live Matter Mural Minneapolis & Messages in a bottle, Project Hope.
Interview Transcription:
SPEAKERS
Molly Joyce, Donna Ray
Molly Joyce 00:00
The first question is, what is resilience for you?
Donna Ray 00:04
Resilience for me is that I will be able to get up and start over again as many times as I need to. I am a ceramic artist. And I am also working in employing a blind woman all the time, almost 61. So resilience means continuously being able to reinvent a box or do whatever you need to do to get through whatever it is that you're trying to get through whether it's education, or if you're trying to get to a task on a job, or you just want to try something new, in terms of creating something new, or building something new, or just starting a new job, you have to always have to get up and go about yourself to always start over again, that's resilience to me.
Molly Joyce 00:49
And the second question is, what is isolation for you?
Donna Ray 00:55
Isolation is being shut out of anything, whether it be the conversation, or not being invited to the table, when it comes down to making decisions about what is best for me, or how I want to be a part of this society, or any kind of being closed out not being able to be active in the communication or not being able to say, what I feel or being invited to the table period, like they can invite you to the table. But that doesn't mean they're going to give you a chance to speak about what you think it's best for you. Or even if you have an opinion at all. So isolation can mean loneliness and being by yourself. And you can be in a crowded room and still be by yourself, if they don't invite you to take you there. But they invited you gave me an invitation, but they want to talk or they are talking around you as if you don't exist as isolation to
Molly Joyce 01:57
And kind of the opposite of that, what is connection for you?
Donna Ray 02:02
Connection is to be involved, to be community involved, whether it be in the outside community, family, community, work community, universal community, always feel like you can be involved in the community is, is everything to me whether I am in my art community, my employment community, my community with my friends, sometimes when you be in communities with friends, it can be your friends who are disabled, just like you who are not really ready to be around other people because they call us. But people they call disabled people sometimes as people, yeah, there are people but we all humans. And then a lot of times what happens is that they separate us in different communities. And then these communities means everything. If all my communities can get together, we'd be happy. And it's not about being separated or being able to be with this community today, like the art community, and then I can go from the art community and go to the work community. And of course, they don't want to be around the art community. It's like that all the way around the board.
Molly Joyce 03:23
Definitely. And the last question is, what is darkness for you?
Donna Ray 03:30
Darkness, well, darkness can be offline and only see black, white and gray. So darkness to me, means to not be able to be out there, you know, I've been being completely closed out. Not being able to travel. Like when the pandemic hit, it was I thought it was the end of the world of not being able to ride Metro Mobility with my friends and but I can ride on a team ability to go to work. But I get I could not travel around and go visit other people in other cities and states. So when the pandemic came, it was like, I had to make new decisions and new decisions that bought on isolation and being shut out of different programs and organizations because of the pandemic. And then when you have a disability you can't ride a different program or different Metro Abilities with your friends. And you can't really be in your art community either because that's close. But you can go back and forth to work even though that is something is still darkness to me because I don't have everything. Everything once if I have everything then I'm not in darkness and the pandemic just annoying that it exists didn't, that it changed my whole persona of everything? Just you know, in is still going on. That's darkness to me is the pandemic. You know, not knowing, you know, what if it's gonna ever end and I know life would never be the same, where we always have to keep reinventing and then trying to figure out how to survive with that darkness. You know, even though this is the 31st year of ADA, I'm like, wow, it's the 31st year but what has happened in this 31st year we have the pandemic and we're trying to readjust with the disability with the pandemic.