Title: “Joe looked out over the second horizon and thought, ‘What a beautiful day for a schlobtopperston!”
Needless to say, he called out of work.
The future is like that, if you let it.
Size: 3.5x4.5”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: “See from the center, an all outward points are encompassed.”
SRO #097
Size: 3x5”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: “Rays of light intersect to form an apparently-solid object.”
SRO #096
Size: 3x5”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
Note: Don’t be fooled.
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: “The paintings by the window were very interesting.”
SRO #095
Size: 4x2.5” on 4.5x6” canvas
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
Note: Another interesting back! This is essentially two pieces of art in one Smooth Ray Original!
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: “It’s possible that this is what the Universe looks like.”
SRO #094
Size: 4x4.5”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: “On the other hand, maybe it looks like this.”
SRO #098
Size: 8x4”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper.
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: You’ve got it all backwards.
SRO #098
Size: 3.75x3.75”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: The world you perceive is not reality, but a break in reality. A momentary turning away from what is true.
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: Energy moves. This explains all.
SRO #092
Size: 4x3”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Status: For sale in the Smooth Ray shop!
Title: The center remains steady. Mostly.
SRO #091
Size: 4x4”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Status: For sale in the shop!
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The Secret is Extra Lime!
Title: The Mystery of the Murdered Fortune Teller
SRO #090
Size: 3x3
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Status: Smooth Ray Original #090 was donated to a free art project hosted by Higher Self in Portland, Oregon.
Note: Years ago, Smooth Ray created a series of postcards based on text-based ephemera. Vintage stamps, old encyclopedias, book catalog cards … stuff that basically doesn’t exist anymore.
You can purchase those postcards here, in case you’re the type that still writes letters and is nostalgic for a more tactile world. Smooth Ray sure is.
Title: In an infinite universe, there is no room for chaos.
SRO #089
Size: 4.5x4.5
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Status: In private collection.
Note: There’s an old riddle that Smooth Ray has been thinking about lately: “If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?”
The scientific answer is pretty straightforward — No, because sound requires an ear to interpret vibration. No ear, no sound.
However, the question is really about perception and existence. It asks one to consider, does an unperceived object exist?
The wikipedia page for this “riddle” (or perhaps it is a zen koan) is fascinating.
The question is often attributed to the philosopher George Berkeley, but its modern format didn’t evolve until 200 years after he wrote, in 1710:
“The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden... no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them.”
We make our world through the act of perceiving it. Which is to say, we are our world — we are not separate from it.
YOU ARE LOVE.
Title: There was always a bottle of olive oil sitting by the window. "A most important elixir," she called it.
SRO #088
Size: 3.5x2.5
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Something a little different on the back of this one, instead of the classic Smooth Ray signature. This is a truly special Smooth Ray Original — and a pretty amazing bottle of olive oil.
Good olive oil is important, particularly in a dish like gambas al ajillo, which has only 3 ingredients: shrimp, garlic and olive oil. Smooth Ray lived in Barcelona for a brief time, and often had meals of garlicky shrimp and the ubiquitous bocadilla de tortilla.
Title: Some folks called it progress. Many still do.
SRO #087
Size: 5x4”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: The first electric power lines were built in the late 1800s, and not too much of the technology has changed, until recently. When Smooth Ray sees power lines furiously criss-crossing a country road, he is reminded that time often appears to pass like garlic in the pan: it goes slow, until it goes fast. Not much happens, until everything appears to change at once.
**SOLD** For sale in the shop **SOLD**
Title: YOU ARE LOVE
SRO #067-086
Size: 4x4” print on canvas of varying size
Date: 2021
Medium: Relief printing, water-based ink on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Love is what you ARE, fundamentally: energy, light, peace, happiness, joy. Love.
Love isn't something you need to find. You aren't lacking in it. You ARE it.
Will be distributed in the Trumansburg-Ithaca area.
2 others available for purchase (#050 and #065). Support the project!
Title: YOU ARE LOVE
SRO #047-066
Size: 4x4” print on canvas of varying size
Date: 2021
Medium: Relief printing, water-based ink on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Love is what you ARE, fundamentally: energy, light, peace, happiness, joy. Love.
Love isn't something you need to find. You aren't lacking in it. You ARE it.
18 will be distributed in the Ithaca-Trumansburg area. If you find one, leave a comment!
2 others available for purchase (#050 and #065). Support the project!
Title: What makes a thing exist?
SRO #046
Size: 5x3”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Will Smooth Ray’s taco shop exist one day? Who says it doesn’t already?
True enough, You can’t go right now and order a smoothie or a breakfast burrito. You can’t pay a buck for a beer, and then go sit in the surf and let the waves wash over your feet. You can’t … And, Smooth Ray has already done it.
Smooth Ray has seen it, imagined it: blending those bananas and limes, frying up the perfect fish taco. Smooth Ray has handed you bliss on a plate.
What’s the difference between a memory and a daydream?
If time is an illusion and all of life temporary, then does When a thing exists really make a difference?
Go ahead and put your order in. Just don’t be impatient.
Status: SRO#046 is in the private collection of a prolific and well-known artist.
Title: When the crack first appeared, we didn't think much of it.
SRO #044
Size: 3.5x2.5”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Will be left in random location in Trumansburg, NY.
Title: In the future, cities will be mostly metaphorical.
SRO #045
Author: Smooth Ray
Size: 3.5x2.5”
Date: 2021
Medium: Watercolor on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: A rare mis-stamp! This could be the next Inverted Jenny!
WIll be left at random location in Trumansburg, NY.
Title: Walking the Dinosaur
SRO #042, #043
Author: Smooth Ray
Size: 3x2”
Date: 2021 (image taken 2015)
Medium: Photography, watercolor staining, mounted on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: Back in 2015, Smooth Ray was somewhere near the middle of South Dakota when he saw this amazing sight: a child walking their pet dinosaur.
You see some strange things, when you’re on the road. The world looks different from the vantage point of motion. There is more space for serendipity, which depends on clear seeing—a hard task, when surrounded by the familiar.
Smooth Ray was doing about 90 on I-90 when he caught sight of the dinosaur on a leash. Foot on the brake even before the image fully registered … but it being Montana, turning around at the next exit meant a 30 mile detour. Nonetheless, absolutely worth it.
Statue is in a field near Murdo, S.D.
SRO #042 Was donated to a free art project hosted by Higher Self in Portland, Oregon. SRO #043 was left in a random location in Trumansburg, NY.
Title: Girl on Bike, Washington, D.C. (2006)
SRO #040, #041
Author: Smooth Ray
Size: 3x2”
Date: 2021 (image taken 2006)
Medium: Photography, watercolor staining, mounted on 140-pound cold pressed paper
Note: It seems like a lifetime ago, but there was a time when Smooth Ray made his living as a freelance photojournalist for newspapers and wire services.
Smooth Ray photographed disasters, small town festivals, national political events, sports at all levels, religious ceremonies, people who seemed to have everything, and those who seemed to have lost it all.
The image here is an example of Smooth Ray’s documentary work in Washington, D.C.
With support from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, Smooth Ray spent almost a year documenting changing life in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
The result was The Mount Pleasant Project.
SRO #041 was donated to a free art project hosted by Higher Self in Portland, Oregon. SRO #040 was left in a random location in Trumansburg, NY.
Smooth Ray is a guy with a dream: to make the best banana-coconut smoothie you can find.
“The secret is extra lime,” he always says.
Until he can open that perfect sea-side taco joint, Smooth Ray focuses on making small-format art in a variety of mediums. Most of these, he leaves in public spaces for people to serendipitously discover.
Current location: Trumansburg, NY
PO Box 203
Trumansburg, NY
14886
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Want to support the taco shop dream? Loving the found art? Check out the shop!
