Tuesday, September 5, 2006

Writer/Contact: Nora Wendl, 706/542-0069, nwendl@uga.edu

Work of Nell Ruby featured in UGA's Lamar Dodd School of Art Main Gallery

Athens, Ga. – “Sheets to the Wind,” an exhibition by Nell Ruby, assistant professor of art at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, is on display at the Lamar Dodd School of Art (LDSOA) Main Gallery in the Visual Arts Building on the University of Georgia campus through Oct. 6.

Opening events on Tuesday, Sept. 5, include a panel discussion at 3 p.m. in the LDSOA courtyard on “The Role of ‘Medium’ in Contemporary Art,” a public lecture by the artist at 5:30 p.m. in room 116 of the LDSOA and an opening reception at 6:30 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.

In the site-specific installation, both first-time visitors and those familiar with the gallery will be struck by Ruby’s spatial transformation of the Main Gallery. Using common construction materials, direct drawing and projected video, Ruby transforms solid walls into clouds, sky and planes of light. Windows cut directly into glowing translucent walls of plastic sheeting create side-stages through which the viewer witnesses various dioramas as though in a Natural History Museum of Everyday Poetics.  Projections into the spaces are of simple, quiet natural vistas that have subtle movement—birds floating off and on a wire, a wheat field waving and a sky with clouds brewing. Ruby brings these ordinary outdoor experiences inside, where they transform the literal interior space of the public gallery into an intimate personal dreamscape. The window opening acts as mediator to contrast inside and outside, sky and ground, commercial and personal, public and private, drawing and photography, flat and dimensional, monochrome and bright color.

The processes of making and of looking are significant to the artist. Ruby imbues her work with a sense of play, but includes the hard undertones of the serious world we inhabit. Her windows and TV screens actively engage the viewer in animated contrast to our commonly passive experience of observing the broadcast screen.

Ruby is an installation artist interested in exploring boundaries and thresholds—where dark meets light, inside meets out, matter meets void and safety meets risk. In her installations, the artist often combines the use of throwaway materials with photographic projections to compartmentalize space. Her subject matter includes common products and landscapes that typify common American existence.

Ruby’s recent exhibits include work at Gallery 24 in Berlin, Eyedrum Gallery in Atlanta and The Eisentrager/Howard Gallery in Lincoln, Neb. She is currently showing drawings at the 2006 International Invitational Works on Paper Exhibition at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. She has a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.

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