Tour lets guests experience artists working

By Sharon Shero

This October, the White Rock Lake Artists Studio Tour is celebrating 30 years of East Dallas artists’ opening their workplace doors to the public. With such an auspicious milestone, it is opportune to highlight the Tour’s founder, Marty Ray.

A Dallas native, Ray’s artistic talent was nurtured from early childhood by her parents and more formally throughout high school at Samuel High School, East Texas State University, eventually earning her MFA from Southern Methodist University. During these years, she concentrated on honing her painting and printmaking skills.   

The U.S. Department of Defense hired Ray to teach high school art in Tokyo, where she assumed full advantage of traveling throughout Asia. In the Far East, Ray found inspiration in its culture and arts, which dovetailed with her nascent interest in working in clay. She discovered she could combine her many artistic interests, painting, drawing (incising), sculpting, shaping pots and experimenting with glaze chemistry into a single medium. Notably, she independently studied under Octavio Medellin among other Dallas art luminaries.

Ray shared her intrigue with clay and glaze with her students, initially at Bryan Adams High School in East Dallas and ultimately at North Lake College where she focused on ceramics, sculpture and 3D design until her retirement as a Professor Emerita of Art. 

Considering her expansive accomplishments, accolades and travels, Ray avers that “the White Rock Lake Artists’ Studio Tour is one of my proudest achievements and is an extension of being a teacher.” To this day, the Tour provides students, educators and art lovers opportunities to experience how artists work in their creative environments, in a variety of art forms and studio settings, dispersed through the White Rock Lake neighborhoods.  

Having led the Tour for the past 29 years, Ray has passed the baton to fellow artist Sharon Shero, so that Ray may continue pursuing her ever burgeoning artistic interests, philanthropy and art community obligations. Marty may have stepped away from leading the Tour (although she will always be its muse), but she has miles to go before she sleeps!

Married to Richard Ray, an estimable painter in his own right, they have collaborated on art projects and shared their Barbaree home for an impressive 52 years. This autumn, you may visit Marty and Richard at their expansive studios during the tour October 14 and 15. Beyond the tour, Marty’s work is available at her representative gallery, Craighead-Green in Dallas.

For more information about the White Rock Artist Tour, visit whiterockartists.com, contact via email 

[email protected] or scan the QR code.