Nancy Rubins

Nancy Rubins
"Big Edge"
Born	1952 Naples, Texas
Nationality	American
Education	Maryland Institute College of Art University of California, Davis.
Known for	Sculpture, Installation artist, Photography
Awards	American Academy of Arts & Letters, Academy Award in Art (2003) Rockefeller Foundation Travel Award (1993)

Nancy Rubins (born Naples, Texas, 1952) is an American sculptor and Installation artist. Her sculptural works are primarily composed of blooming arrangements of large rigid objects such as televisions, airplane parts, rowboats, kayaks, canoes, surfboards, and other objects. Works such as "Big Edge” contain over 200 boat vessels. "The Canoes Overhead" contains 66 used aluminum boats and rises to a height of 60 ft.

Life and Early Career

Rubins was born in Naples (Texas) and grew up in Tullahoma, Tennessee. She studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, where she received her BFA in 1974, and then at the University of California, Davis where she received her MFA in 1976. Rubins currently resides in Topanga, California and teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Since her early career, Rubins has challenged the nature of mediums. In college she worked primarily with clay. She avoided the characteristic permanence of ceramics with the constant disassembling of sculptures, collapsing her work back into the slip bucket or back into raw scraps. Her 1974 piece, "Mud Slip, Army-Surplus Canvas and Used Cups from Coffee Machine" combined found materials with wet clay; it lasted only as long as the clay stayed wet. Her creation of unlikely assemblages grew as she began to incorporate more detritus and found materials into her work.

Rubins was privately commissioned to create her first public installation in 1981. "Big Bil-Bored" was a highly controversial artwork, voted "Ugliest Sculpture in Chicago" in a radio poll. Constructed of various discarded appliances, the installation still towers forty-three feet high outside of the Cermack Plaza shopping center in Berwyn, Illinois. [[File:Big Bil-Bored]] Soon after, Rubins was offered a commission for another public installation. In 1982, the Washington Project for the Arts funded Rubins's "Worlds Apart," a forty-five foot tall temporary installation comprised of abandoned appliances, concrete and steel rebar. Her work overlooked the Whitehurst Freeway, blocks from the Watergate Building in Washington D.C., and was again met with controversy.

By the mid-1980s Rubins had begun using abandoned airplane parts in her work. She collaborated with husband Chris Burden on a number of projects including an installation called "A Monument to Megalopolises Past and Future" at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in 1987.

In 1993, Rubins was invited to participate in the Venice Biennale.

Her work has since been exhibited in many museums of modern and contemporary art in the United States and Europe.

Exhibitions

Rubins's work has been shown internationally throughout the past twenty years. Installations can be found in the public collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Eli Broad Foundation, Los Angeles.

Rubins has also had major solo exhibitions at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2005, 2001, 1997, 1994,1993); Fonds regional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne, France (2005); Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles (2001); Miami Art Museum (1999); ARTPACE, San Antonio (1997); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1995); and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (1994). Rubins has also shown in many group exhibitions including "Belvdere dell'Arte Orizzonti," Forte Belvedere, Florence (2003); the Whitney Museum of American Art's 1995 Biennial Exhibition; "Aperto," 45th Venice Biennale (1993); and "Helter Skelter; LA Art in the 1990s," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Awards

• Maryland Institute College of Art Alumni Award (2000)
• Flintridge Foundation Visual Artist Award (1997-98)
• Rockefeller Foundation Travel Award (1993)
• The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Awards in Painting, Sculpture, Printmaking, Photography, and Craft Media (1991)
• Creative Artists Public Service Grant, New York State Council for the Arts (1981)
• NEA (1981, 1980, 1977)

Sculptures

• "Airplane Parts and Hills" Österreichischer Skulpturenpark (Austrian Sculpture Park) Unterpremstätten (2003)
• "Big Bil-Bored" Berwyn, IL (1980)
• "Big Edge" CityCenter Las Vegas, NV (2009)
• "Big Pleasure Point" Lincoln Center New York, NY (2006)
• "Chas’ Stainless Steel, Mark Thompson’s Airplane Parts, About 1000 Pounds of Stainless Steel Wire, and Gagosian's Beverly Hills Space" Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA (2001)
• "The Canoes Overhead" Albright-Knox Art Gallery Buffalo, NY (2011)