By Julianna Leach

Previously printed in

The Trail Bazer

Taylor Ray creates a design on clay at the Claypool- Young Art building on Feburary 2, 2018 in Morehead, Ky.  At right, Ray helps a young artist with a project. as Ray volunteers for the Eagle Arts Program at the Claypool- Young Art building on Friday March 2, 2018 in Morehead, Ky.

Photos by Julianna Leach/The Trail Blazer

MOREHEAD-Taylor Ray finds virtue in volunteering and art advocacy.

When she’s not working on her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, she volunteers with the Eagle Arts program, an after-school session where volunteers teach kids about art and encourage them to express how they feel.

“We don’t just teach them the value of art,” said Ray. “We teach them the value of themselves.”

During the program, various mediums such as ceramics and music are used to encourage inspiration, therapy, education and togetherness.

“I get to share my passion with them [the kids],” she added.

Her personal artistic inspiration derives from high school experiences where she frequently questioned who she was as a person. Those experiences set the tone for a theme that continually shows up in her art: vice and virtue.

“With every vice, there is a virtue that counters it, and with every virtue, there is a vice that counters it,” she said.

Ray, an Irvine, Ky. native, wants to always be a promoter of art advocacy because of the negative connotation society has towards the arts.

“Some people don’t consider teaching kids the value of art important,” she said. “But they also don’t know what encompasses the world of art.”

Ray hopes that her art will encourage people to think about vice and virtue in their own lives.

She believes the things she does as a volunteer and advocator of the arts will help equal out negative vices in the world.