It’s easy for a visitor to amble by and miss the glass studio, tucked into a steep hillside beneath a canopy of towering dogwoods and redbuds, belonging to the artist Charles “Chip” Reay. For those who know to look for it, the structure delights with a feast for the senses: The temperature drops beneath the trees, a building comes into focus, and a bordering creek babbles its welcome.
Thirteen years ago, when Reay decided to retire from the architectural firm HOK after a 40-year career there, words from Horace’s poetry collection Satires became the driving force behind the design of his studio, to be situated on the same shaded woodland property of the residence he shares with his wife, May. Reay envisioned a structure of glass windows that opened into the woods “with buttresses growing out of the frame like tree limbs.”
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Across an arched bridge and up a winding stone path, or down a steep slope and into the studio’s upper balcony library, evidence of Reay’s 60-plus years as a working artist and designer abounds: in a pair of goose decoys used as part of a recent installation at Bruno David Gallery; in unsold collages inspired by the painter Marcel Duchamp; in a model for a residential conservatory in St. Louis; and in the life-size mannequins purchased at the Arts and Education Council and awaiting a new incarnation.
This was ever among the number of my wishes: A portion of ground not over large, in which was a garden, and a fountain with a continual stream close to my house, and a little woodland beside. Horace, Satires, 1 B.C.
Also in the mix are a collection of objects from Reay’s travels, such as molds for doll heads and natural keepsakes like rocks, horseshoe crabs, and twigs. The inexplicable (a stuffed raccoon) hangs above the high (a violin) and the low (a fart machine). Though he claims that the space is “a mess,” the summative picture is planned chaos. As Reay considers how tiny plastic babies found their way into a sushi diorama, he muses, “They move around; I don’t know why they’re parked there now.”
The main floor features multiple workspaces, including a seating area designed around a massive wood-burning fireplace, and in the back of the studio, opposite the 18-foot-high windows, a portrait of the artist emerges: in the cartoon he sold to Playboy in 1962, in one of many doodles he pens while talking on the phone, and on a shopping bag bearing the logo he designed for the Missouri Botanical Garden in the early 1970s. Reay calls the mass of newspaper clippings, sketches, receipts and designs “an archaeological collection of things old and new.”
Throughout Reay’s career, he has worked on both small- and large-scale projects, from Silver Beach (an amusement center in Michigan) and the John Deere Pavilion in Illinois to nature centers, like the Saint Louis Zoo’s Living World and the Wild Center, the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, in New York. Reay maintains a special love for natural history museums because of their impact on the public. Even if only 10 percent of the Wild Center’s visitors “become motivated enough to do something about the Adirondacks,” he notes, that’s nearly 100,000 people.
Contemplating an unfinished figurine that resembles an owl, Reay says he’s unsure where it will eventually go. One can’t help but wonder what will inspire its completion: a memory, an artifact, or the nonpareil view from his studio.
