David Ruth, submitted artwork
David Ruth
Sculpture
Oakland, California
David Ruth is an Oakland, California based glass sculptor that has been making large-scale cast glass sculptures and cast glass architectural features for over 30 years. Often featuring bright colors and contrasting polished surfaces with rough textures, the work has been featured in architecture, museums, and in galleries around the world. In 2006 Ruth received an award from the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program for travel to Palmer Station, Antarctica. The exploration and work from this residency would become the foundation to his most recent work: Geologic Editions and Sculpture. This body of work focuses on geology and climate expressed through cast glass usually supported by metal. When geology and ice are translated into glass and put in the light, the patterns refract the daily sun and become time markers for our planetary existence. The light transmitting through the glass becomes an indicator of time, in the day, year, the course of human activity, and the formation of the rock… extending back deep in history. Watching the work change it becomes an interactive experience where time itself stretches and contracts.
Works
David Ruth, submitted artwork
For the last 20 years I have been exploring the intersections of geology, natural forms, and fractured light through sculptural cast glass. My journey began with a transformative expedition to Palmer Station, Antarctica with the National Science Foundation in 2006, where I collected texture molds from glacier ice and stone. I have used these to construct glass forms and architectural panels that activate and scintillate light to feature the urgent realities of our changing planet coupled with an awe for the light-filled world we live in now. In casting glass, my sculptures are infused with a prismatic effect, capturing the ever-changing interplay of light and refraction. In the course of the day and year, sunlight plays on my pieces in a continuously variable beam. Adding local rock to my Antarctica library of textures, I see evidence of plate tectonics from rock formed underwater millions of years ago, now thrust up into the hills behind my studio, illuminating layered time. The changes are from minute to hour and season to the great geologic ages of the earth, stepping back into the infinite past towards creation.
