swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

to beat or not be beat
Nicca Ray, Jesse McCloskey & Kathleen Florence

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Nicca Ray was raised in Los Angeles, not far from the ­Griffith Park Planetarium where scenes from her father, Nicholas Ray’s, most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause, were shot. First inspired by the New York Dolls performing on the Real Don Steele Show, she started going to clubs on the Sunset Strip when she was fifteen, and became heavily involved in the L.A. punk scene when she was seventeen. At age twenty, she began work on getting sober, and shortly after, moved to New York, where, in her early thirties, was accepted into the New School University. While a student she published short stories in various journals, made two short films—including one that screened at the New York Underground Film Festival—and starred in Cutting Moments, the first film in the underground gore classic series, Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America, directed by Douglas Buck. After graduating in 1999, at thirty-eight years old, she devoted her life to researching and interviewing people about her father’s life, for which Ray by Ray is a culmination. She currently lives in New York City.

Jesse McCloskey is a New York-based artist hailing from a tiny town in Massachusetts where little abandoned cemeteries list smallpox victims and stories of accused witches lay buried near the town green. His latest solo exhibitions include “Romantic Poison” at SRO Gallery, NY and “Making a Scene” at Site 57 Gallery, NY. The artist’s work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, most recently at 490 Atlantic Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; Brooklyn Collage Collective, Brooklyn, NY; and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, NY. He received a BFA from the Swain School of Design in Massachusetts and a MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York. www.jessemccloskey.com

Kathleen Florence (Reichelt) is based in Canada. She writes and directs scripts for film and stage, and has worked in story development and production for decades. Kathleen studied at Toronto’s OCAD University, Vancouver’s Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and has a BA in Cultural Studies from Trent University. She works in performance, film and non-profit communications. Her work has been published by NYC’s Three Rooms Press and Arteidolia, included in exhibitions, festivals and residencies from Montreal to Spain.