Rate My Professor Ron Laboray

Ron Laboray is Professor of Painting and Drawing and Director of the School of Art and Design in the David Orr Belcher College of Fine and Performing Arts at Western Carolina University. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Washington University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Laboray resides in Asheville, North Carolina, and his office is located in the 244 Fine & Performing Arts Building. In his leadership role, he oversees the school's faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate programs, including BA, BFA, BS, MAED, and MFA degrees in art and design.

Laboray's artistic practice centers on a pseudoscientific method of creation, developing a visual archive of popular culture that integrates historical subject matter with mass culture elements such as television, movies, comic books, fast food logos, and junk mail advertising. He employs the visual languages of abstraction and realism to construct data-based artworks. His work has been exhibited in museums, special project spaces, and galleries in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Budapest, France, Taiwan, and Japan. As a multimedia conceptual artist, he produces paintings, drawings, video, and sculpture that explore time, popular culture, shared histories, globalization, and the interplay of scientific and digital influences with mass media.

Laboray's teaching philosophy focuses on integrating other artists' and students' artwork into public forums via collaborative curatorial projects and exhibitions. He collaborates with local historical groups, municipal committees, labor unions, and not-for-profit organizations to extend artistic engagement beyond the university. His contributions enhance Western Carolina University's fine arts programs, fostering creative practice grounded in conceptual exploration and public interaction.