February
Becoming an Artist is Not a Linear Path
by Charles Moore
This month’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Leslie and Michael Weissman and Lois Whitman Hess and Eliot Hess.
While some artists claim they always envisioned a career in the arts, others reveal that working in this space is far from a linear path. Some pursue a career in a different field entirely—in medicine, for instance, or in construction—and only later decide to pivot. Fountainhead’s artists-in-residence during February, Bony Ramirez, Nate Lewis, and Patricia Ayres, are three such examples of working artists whose careers have emerged in unexpected yet compelling ways.
Bony Ramirez was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to New Jersey at the age of 13, though it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic hit that the artist quit his construction job to focus on his calling: leveraging sculpture and painting to celebrate his Caribbean culture. Applying symbolism— coconut trees, seashells, and the rooster fighting he observed often as a child—Ramirez relies on vibrant color and rounded shapes to bring his heritage to light. His work reveals to viewers that the Caribbean is so much more than a smattering of resorts. In this same vein, the artist’s “Caribabies” are a series of doll-like sculptures with hard heads attached to soft bodies, representing an exploration of Black and Brown youth navigating the contemporary
art world. They’re a powerful, three-dimensional accompaniment to his paintings. Though Ramirez has risen to acclaim, it took years of resilience for the artist to access opportunities in his chosen field. His early success resulted from an online exhibition with the Thierry Goldberg Gallery in New York, a product of the artist’s social media presence (which proved more fruitful than the open calls he relied on initially), gaining so much attention in November 2020 that Ramirez has since exhibited with Deitch Projects, Company Gallery, and other renowned spaces. Selected for the 2021 Artsy Vanguard, today the artist’s work is showcased in storied collections like the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
It wasn’t until age 25 that Nate Lewis began doodling—mostly in an effort to stay awake while working as a critical-care nurse. His sister, an artist in her own right, bought him a book on drawing. The creations that followed became the center of Lewis’s now-defunct t-shirt line, preceding years of free-form exploration, rife with line work and patterns reminiscent of medical patients’ electrocardiogram rhythms. Driven by empathy, the artist—whose background as an athlete, musician, and healthcare worker offers marked versatility—blends his nursing experience with his love of the arts, showcasing people’s heart rhythms and surgical elements via paper-based portraits. There’s a focus on movement throughout.
For the Pennsylvania-born artist, it’s all in the name of understanding the world. The farther he gets from the ICU, the less acute his past experiences become, though his paper-cutting techniques continue to evoke the fragility of the work involved in Lewis’s past career.
There’s an element of care here—photographs of Black men and women adorned with carvings and sculptural patterns—and the need to be careful and precise, all while showcasing the lines and curves of the human body. Leaning into paper, Lewis has completed paper and print residencies, exploring the nuance of process in a playful manner, all while blending medicine and human emotion. Since he began his career in the arts in 2012, Lewis’s work has been acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
A former fashion designer, sculptor Patricia Ayres depicts the body under systemic oppression—alluding to the human figure rather than recreating it in the literal sense. It was only after working in fashion (the artist earned undergraduate degrees from the Fashion Institute of Technology and Brooklyn College, before earning her MFA from Hunter College in 2019, where she studied under Nari Ward), that Ayres realized her skillset from the fashion industry could serve her well in sculpture. Stretching and constraining materials like military elastic straps, metal hardware, padding, and wood, the resulting totemic creations exude sexual dominance and control, paired with elements of constraint borne from the artist’s upbringing in the Catholic Church.
Ayres’s work is geometric and crude, large-scale and raw—massive and vulnerable in equal measure—presenting a dynamic take on the human figure via neutral colors that evoke human skin in a manner entirely unlike what we’ve seen before. One might argue that the artist’s nonlinear path is responsible for this.
Patricia
Ayres
The core of Patricia Ayres’s work deals with exploring manifestations of the body when under the duress of systemic oppression. Ayres is interested in the physical and psychological scars an oppressive experience marks onto the body, creating a cycle of generational harm. Drawing from a former career as a fashion designer, she still imagines the body when sourcing and preparing materials for construction, but merely alludes to the figure instead of
recreating it.
Her practice includes a process of cutting, stitching, pulling, wrapping, and staining elastic with iodine, gunk, paint, and anointing oils. Constraining and restraining her materials together to form large, crude sculptures, Ayres examines the physical and emotional torture embedded within isolation, separation, and confinement. Ayres is currently represented by Matthew Brown gallery in Los Angeles. She recently exhibited at the Rubell Museum in Miami, her work was featured in a group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, and she has work in the Bunker Art Space in Palm Beach, FL, and at Zuzeum in Latvia. Ayres was born in New York, where she currently lives and works.
From left to right: 10-15-8-14, 2021. Elastic, military elastic, paint, ink, dye, anointing oil, iodine, gunk, joint compound, metal hardware, thread, wood, padding, and foam, photo courtesy of Matthew Brown Gallery; 18-15-19-1-4-5-12-9-13-1, 2022. Elastic, paint, ink, dye, anointing oil, iodine, gunk, metal hardware, thread, wood, padding, and foam, photographed at Fountainhead by Rose Marie Cromwell; A portrait of Ayres in her Fountainhead studio by Rose Marie Cromwell; 13-1-24-9-13-9-12-9-1-14-11-15-12-2- 5, 2022. Elastic, paint, ink, dye, anointing oil, iodine, gunk, metal hardware, thread, wood, padding, and foam, photo credit Rose Marie Cromwell.
Nate Lewis
Nate Lewis never made a single work of art until he was 25 years old when he started a T-shirt line that led to creating a community art event in Washington, DC. At the time, Lewis had been working as a critical care nurse, and the diagnostic imagery of x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans seeped into his illustrations, helping him form the basis of his work. As an athlete, musician, and medical worker, Lewis’s work is driven largely by movement. Whether bringing to life the sonic vibrations of jazz or conjuring his figures to spring to life from a flattened surface, he is interested in the tension between balanced and imbalanced systems and how they are cultivated. His figures, often photographs of Black men and women he affixes onto paper and then carves and sculpts patterns on, are a celebration and appreciation of the diverse disciplines of movement within the African diaspora. He often uses light to shift the viewer’s point of view of the work depending on their vantage point, a technique that mimics how we frame our ideas based on how we move through the world.
Since starting a trajectory toward becoming a professional artist 10 years ago, Lewis’s work has been acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Blanton Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among others. He has lectured at Yale University as part of Claudia Rankine’s Racial Imaginary Institute, the Yale Center for British Art, and Paris Photo, and is represented by Fridman Gallery in New York. Lewis was born in Beaver Falls, PA. He currently lives and works in NYC.
From left to right: Lewis in his studio at Fountainhead Residency, photographed by Rose Marie Cromwell; A portrait of Lewis, stretched like one of his figures at the water’s edge, also by Cromwell; Harbingers of wind script II, 2022. Hand-sculpted inkjet print, ink, and frottage; arch in the calligraphy, 2022. Hand-sculpted inkjet print, ink, graphite, and frottage.
Bony Ramirez’s meteoric rise to recognition lies squarely with the singularity of his portraits: He draws his figures with an unflinching personal style that borrows from both Cubist and Renaissance influences while ensconcing them in the familiarity of his own Caribbean backdrop. Drawing his figures first on paper before mounting them on wood and painting a backdrop around them, Ramirez is inspired by the form and style of painters like Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso; draws references from the Renaissance paintings that he remembers from growing up Catholic and visiting the church; and selects colors, icons and motifs—a chartreuse plantain, jungle green vines or a cerulean sea —to consider his native land’s violent history as a colonial territory.
The Dominican-born artist, who moved to New Jersey just before he started high school, never imagined a career as an artist until he made his very recent breakthrough into the contemporary art world. Since being discovered on Instagram at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—his initial success was borne of an online exhibition with Thierry Goldberg gallery in New York—Ramirez has exhibited his work with Deitch Projects, Company Gallery, Nino Mier Gallery, Regular Normal, and others. Recently, his work was acquired by the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, The X Museum, The Frye Art Museum, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He was selected for the 2021 Artsy Vanguard, a remarkable feat for a 25-year-old artist who has no formal training and was painting in his kitchen less than two years ago. Ramirez was born in Tenares, Dominican Republic. He currently lives and works in Perth Ambroy, NJ.
Bony Ramirez
From left to right: Walk Towards The Water, 2022. Acrylic, colored pencil, soft oil pastel, wallpaper, and Bristol paper on wood panel, courtesy of the artist; A portrait of Ramirez with local palm fronds by Rose Marie Cromwell; Ramirez in his studio at Fountainhead Residency, also by Cromwell; La Mamá De Perla, 2022. Acrylic, colored pencil, soft oil pastel, wallpaper, varied seashells, and Bristol paper on wood panel, courtesy of the artist.
Ayres, 2-9-2-9-1-14-1, 2021. Elastic, paint, ink, dye, anointing oil, iodine, metal hardware, thread, wood, padding, and foam. Photo courtesy of Matthew Brown Gallery.
Ayres, 10-15-8-14, 2021. Elastic, military elastic, paint, ink, dye, anointing oil, iodine, gunk, joint compound, metal hardware, thread, wood, padding, and foam. Photo courtesy of Matthew Brown Gallery.
Ayres, 13-9-3-8-1-5-12, 2021. Elastic, paint, ink, dye, anointing oil, iodine, gunk, metal hardware, thread, wood, padding and foam. Photo courtesy of Matthew Brown Gallery.
Lewis, Probing the Land 10, 2020. Hand-sculpted inkjet print, ink, graphite, and frottage.
Lewis, Orchestra in the valley, 2021. Hand- sculpted inkjet print, ink, graphite, and frottage.
Lewis, Ceremonies in the valley, 2021. Hand- sculpted inkjet print, ink, graphite, and frottage.
Ramirez, El Tiguerazo!, 2020. Acrylic, colored pencil, oil pastel, oil stick, and paper on wood panel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ramirez, La Boda Del Cocodrilo/The Crocodile’s Wedding, 2020. Acrylic, colored pencil, oil pastel, oil paint bar, pastel paper, and Bristol paper on wood panel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ramirez, Bayahibe, 2022. Acrylic, colored pencil, soft oil pastel, pearlescent acrylic, and Bristol paper on wood panel. Photo courtesy of the artist.