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Ray Rice
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Ray Rice (1916-2001)
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Raymond C. Rice (1916–2001), also known professionally as Ray Rice, was an American painter, sculptor, mosaicist, filmmaker and educator whose interdisciplinary career embodied the experimental spirit of postwar California modernism. Working across an unusually wide range of media, Rice developed a deeply personal artistic language. Over the course of six decades he became known not only for his innovative artistic practice, but also for his influential teaching and community engagement, particularly on the Mendocino Coast alongside his wife, artist and researcher Miriam C. Rice (1918–2010). He exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor and the Whitney in New York.
Rice was born in Elkhart, Indiana in 1916. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League of New York, and the New School for Social Research in New York, institutions that exposed him to both academic traditions and the emerging currents of American modernism. In 1940 he received a prestigious Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship.
During his early years at New York’s Art Students League, he met fellow artist Miriam Cohen, later Miriam C. Rice. The two shared a lifelong artistic partnership grounded in experimentation, teaching, and interdisciplinary practice. Following Ray’s WWII military service as a captain, he taught at the progressive Putney School in Vermont before he and Miriam moved west, first to Arizona, where he taught at the Verde School, and later to California, where he joined the faculty at Fresno State College. He also lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, UC San Diego, the University of Southern California, and the California College of Arts and Crafts. During these years Ray and Miriam raised their three daughters—Mira, Rachel, and Felicia—while building parallel artistic careers shaped by travel, teaching, and the influence of Mexican modernism.
Like Miriam Rice, Ray Rice was deeply affected by the Mexican Art Movement and by the socially engaged ideals of public art that circulated widely in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. The couple spent time in Mexico and maintained friendships with artists connected to the circles of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. These influences encouraged Rice’s commitment to monumentality, public accessibility, and the integration of art into daily life and architecture.
During the 1950s and 1960s Rice became associated with the California-based “Art and Architecture” movement, an important postwar effort to integrate fine art directly into modern architectural environments. Working alongside architects, landscape designers, and planners, Rice created mosaics, murals, sculptural environments, and public artworks for both civic and private spaces. His commissions included projects for Ford Motor Company, Bank of America, Fresno Air Terminal, IBM, Matson Steamship Company, American President Lines ocean liners, and numerous schools and residential developments throughout California.
Rice also worked extensively as a painter, printmaker, illustrator, and draftsman. His artworks ranged from lyrical, surreal abstractions and figurative compositions to highly experimental mixed-media constructions. His work was exhibited widely, including at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Film eventually became the medium through which Rice most fully united his talents as a visual artist, poet, and musician. Between 1965 and 1985 he produced more than forty experimental short films utilizing stop-motion and time-lapse techniques. They received numerous awards and were screened at venues including UC Berkeley, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and on national public television.
In 1960 Ray and Miriam Rice began teaching at the newly established Mendocino Art Center, joining a group of artists recruited by founders Bill and Jennie Zacha to help shape one of California’s most important regional arts communities. By 1970 the family had settled permanently in Mendocino. The Mendocino Coast became a fertile environment for experimentation, collaboration, and teaching, allowing both Ray and Miriam to pursue highly individual creative paths while remaining deeply engaged with their community.
Raymond C. Rice died in Mendocino, California in 2001. Today, the Miriam C. and Raymond Rice Papers reside in the Special Collections of the UC Santa Cruz Library. The archive includes Miriam Rice’s extensive research into mushroom dyeing, correspondence, articles, and the complete collection of Ray Rice’s experimental films.
We would like to thank Felicia and the entire RIce family for introducing us to the remarkable lives and work of their parents.
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