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Ginny Ruffner

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Ginny Ruffner
Born1952
Atlanta, Georgia
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Georgia
Known forGlass artist
Websiteginnyruffner.com
External videos
video icon “Curator Tina Oldknow describes Shirts, Cherries, and Snowflakes, of Course by American artist Ginny Ruffner”, Corning Museum of Glass, September 7, 2011.
video icon "Reforestation of the Imagination: Ginny Ruffner", 2018.

Ginny Ruffner (born 1952) is a pioneering American glass artist based in Seattle, Washington.[1] She is known for her use of the lampworking (or flameworking) technique and for her use of borosilicate glass in her painted glass sculptures.[2][3][4]

Many of her ideas begin with drawings. Her works also include pop-up books, large-scale public art, and augmented reality.[5][6]

Ruffner was named a Master of the Medium by the James Renwick Alliance in 2007. Ruffner was elected as a Fellow of the American Craft Council in 2010.[7] She received The Glass Art Society's Lifetime Award in 2019.[8]

Early life

Ginny Carol Martin (later Ruffner) was born on June 21, 1952 in Atlanta, Georgia.[3] Her father was an FBI agent, and her mother was a typing teacher.[9]

Career

Ruffner studied at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, before transferring to the University of Georgia. There she received a BFA in Drawing and Painting in 1974 and an MFA in Drawing and Painting in 1975.[9][10] In a twentieth century art history course, Ruffner saw The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), a glass painting by Marcel Duchamp. It inspired her to begin painting on glass.[2][11]

Following graduation, one of Ruffner's first jobs was working for Hans Godo Frabel as an apprentice lamp worker,[12] creating glass animals.[13] In 1984,[14] Ruffner relocated to Seattle, Washington where she taught the first flameworking class at Pilchuck Glass School.[15][13] There she introduced the use of borosilicate glass.[16] Ruffner was the first woman in the United States to create sculptures with borosilicate glass, which is commonly used in the manufacture of scientific glassware.[17][16]

In lampworking or flameworking, a torch or lamp is used to melt glass, which is then blown and shaped with tools and by hand movements to create a sculptural form. Ruffner further develops her sculptures by painting them and by combining the lampworked glass with metals and other materials. By using a hard glass and working at higher temperatures, Ruffner was able to create much larger lampworked pieces. [16] Through Ruffner's work, lampworking was first recognized as a medium for fine art.[12]

Ruffner's series "Aesthetic Engineering: The Imagination Cycle" of sculptures was inspired by genetic engineering and the sharing of plant and animal genes.[18] It was described as "an exuberant installation of glass, steel and bronze depicting explosive flowers, massive leaves and twisted growing vines".[6] The exhibition has travelled extensively.[19][1]

One of her public art projects, "Urban Garden" (2011), is a 27-foot high metal flowerpot, with flowers and moving petals, in downtown Seattle.[20][21] The sculpture is also a kinetic water feature.[22]

In Reforestation of the Imagination (2018) she combined sculpture in glass and bronze with augmented reality, so that digital images of imagined creatures could be overlaid on sculptural works.[5][14]

Works

Stella at the Louvre, 1990

Through the use of lampworking she has developed a distinctive style, creating glass sculptures, mixed media installations and works of public art that are known for being "opulent, figurative, richly colored and metaphorical".[3]

Ruffner's first solo exhibition was at Georgia Tech Gallery in Atlanta in 1984,[23] followed by solo and group exhibitions at museums such as the Corning Museum of Glass;[18] Museum of Arts and Design;[24] Museum of Glass;[25] Museum of Northwest Art;[19] Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum;[8] Toledo Museum of Art;[26] and Seattle's Traver Gallery,[27] among others.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass,[13] Carnegie Museum of Art,[13] Cooper-Hewitt Museum,[13] Corning Museum of Glass,[28] Detroit Institute of Art,[29] Fort Wayne Museum of Art;[30] Metropolitan Museum of Art;[31] New Mexico Museum of Art;[32] Seattle Art Museum,[33] and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.[2] Her work is included in the United States Art in Embassies Program.[13]

She was profiled on the NPR show Weekend America on March 18, 2006.[34]

She was the subject of a documentary, Ginny Ruffer: A Not So Still Life (2010), which won the Golden Space Needle Award - Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival that year.[35]

Personal life

She married Charles Emory Nail in 1975, divorced in 1980, and married Robert Edward Ruffner later that year.[3]

Entering her thirties, Ginny Ruffner scored high enough on an IQ test to be accepted to Mensa and Intertel, two high-IQ societies.[3]

In 1991, Ruffner was involved in a life-threatening three-car collision. She was in a coma for five weeks. When she finally recovered consciousness, she could not speak, walk, or remember that she was an artist. Doctors doubted that she would walk or talk again. But after a year of extensive physical, speech, and vision therapy, Ruffner was able to return to work. She credits her recovery to being "stubborn and bullheaded".[3] She spent the next five years in a wheelchair, but eventually was able to walk again. The accident left her with speech and mobility issues.[36][37] She rediscovered her own work, in part through the book Why Not?: The Art of Ginny Ruffner (1995) and then revisioned it, juxtaposing materials in ways that balanced "beauty with danger".[3]

References

  1. ^ a b "Glass, metal sculptures by Seattle-based artist Ginny Ruffner kick off Huntsville Museum of Art exhibition season". Advance Local Media. September 30, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c "Ginny Ruffner | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-30.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Farr, Sheila (November 17, 2015). "Ruffner, Ginny (b. 1952)". History Link. Retrieved 2021-09-04.
  4. ^ Hemachandra, Ray (2009). The Penland Book of Glass: Master Classes in Flamework Techniques. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-60059-186-0. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Reforestation of the Imagination: Ginny Ruffner". Talking Out Your Glass. MadArt Studio. 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  6. ^ a b Sanders, Beverly (February 12, 2009). "A Very Touchable Trio". American Craft Council. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  7. ^ "Ginny Ruffner". American Craft Council. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  8. ^ a b McShane, Tess (2019). "The Glass Art Society 2019 Lifetime Award Honorees". GAS News. No. January/February. Glass Art Society. p. 28. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  9. ^ a b "Oral history interview with Ginny Ruffner, 2006 September 13-14". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2017-01-28.
  10. ^ "Ginny Ruffner, Artist - Education". www.ginnyruffner.com. Retrieved 2017-01-28.
  11. ^ Halper, Vicki (2003). "Ginny Ruffner Unlimited; essay by Vicki Halper". Traditional Fine Arts Organization. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  12. ^ a b Mickelsen, Robert A. "Art Glass Lampwork History". The Glass Museum. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  13. ^ a b c d e f "U.S. Department of State - Art in Embassies". art.state.gov. Retrieved 2018-06-14.
  14. ^ a b "Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination | Smithsonian American Art Museum". Smithsonian American Art Museum. 2021. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  15. ^ "Creativity: The Flowering Tornado, Art by Ginny Ruffner". Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  16. ^ a b c Reynolds, Michelle (March 25, 2020). "Object of the Week - "The Juggler of My Heart in Person"". Tacoma Art Museum. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  17. ^ "Collection Search | Eat Your Hat". Corning Museum of Glass. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  18. ^ a b ""I don't want to be bored": Ginny Ruffner talks genetic engineering and creativity at The Corning Museum of Glass". Behind the Glass. Corning Museum of Glass. 5 April 2012. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  19. ^ a b "Ginny Ruffner Biography". Museum of Northwest Art. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  20. ^ "Collection Search : When Lightning Blooms ("Aesthetic Engineering series")". Corning Museum of Glass. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  21. ^ Payne, Patti (June 3, 2011). "Soon: giant flowerpot sculpture on a Seattle corner". Puget Sound Business Journal. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  22. ^ Manitach, Amanda (19 October 2016). "Ginny Ruffner's New Reality". City Arts Magazine. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  23. ^ "Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). Ginny Ruffner. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  24. ^ "Museum of Arts and Design to Preview Its Collection of Exceptional Goblets, Many Created for the Exhibition by Renowned Artists". Museum of Arts & Design. September 28, 2007. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  25. ^ "What Are You Looking At?". Museum of Glass. 2021. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  26. ^ "Glass Movement at Toledo Museum of Art". Toledo.com. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  27. ^ "Ginny Ruffner: Flauna & Fora - Traver Gallery | Seattle Glass Artist". Traver Gallery. 29 March 2019. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  28. ^ "Corning Museum Receives Donation of Contemporary Works in Glass from Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser". Behind the Glass. Corning Museum of Glass. 4 February 2013. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  29. ^ "Art: Collection Search". Detroit Institute of Art. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  30. ^ Thompson, Katy (19 November 2018). "Treasures from the Vault: Ginny Ruffner". From the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  31. ^ "What a Pear". The Met. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  32. ^ "Results – Search Objects – Searchable Art Museum". New Mexico Museum of Art. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  33. ^ Page, Andrew (July 1, 2014). "Seattle Art Museum unveils memorial bench designed by…". UrbanGlass. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  34. ^ "Weekend America for Saturday, March 18, 2006". Weekend America. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
  35. ^ "Golden Space Needle Award Winners". Seattle International Film Festival. Retrieved 2017-01-30.
  36. ^ "Artist Reinvents Herself After Near-Fatal Accident". Voice of America. March 20, 2012. Retrieved 2019-11-09.
  37. ^ Easton, Valerie (December 3, 2011). "Seattle artist Ginny Ruffner's garden is a party". Pacific NW. Archived from the original on 2014-03-19.

Further reading

  • Miller, Bonnie J. (1995). Why Not?: The Art of Ginny Ruffner. Seattle: Tacoma Art Museum in association with the University of Washington Press. ISBN 978-0-295-97508-5.
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