Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination
Visitors to the exhibition Reforestation of the Imagination will use a downloadable app that superimposes digital information over seemingly barren sculptures, creating two distinct realities to explore.
Exhibition Images
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Ginny Ruffner with Grant Kirkpatrick, Liriodendrum plausus (Flapping tulip), 2017, sculpture (handblown glass with acrylic paint tree rings), island (plywood, low-density foam, fiberglass, epoxy, sand, pebbles, and acrylic paint), and holographic image. Sculpture: 19 x 12 x 9 in. Background: Bronze Tree (center island), 2017, plywood, low-density foam, fiberglass, epoxy, sand, pebbles, acrylic paint, bronze, and lampworked glass. Overall: 50 x 63 x 49 in. Installation view at MadArt Studio, 2018. Courtesy Ruffner Studio. Photo by Fiona McGuigan.
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Ginny Ruffner with Grant Kirkpatrick, Digitalis artherium (Double art flowers), 2017, sculpture (handblown glass with acrylic paint tree rings), island (plywood, low-density foam, fiberglass, epoxy, sand, pebbles, and acrylic paint), and holographic image. Sculpture: 9 x 13 x 11 ½ in. Installation view at MadArt Studio, 2018. Courtesy MadArt. Photo by James Harnois.
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Ginny Ruffner, Avem iridis illuricae (Hummingbird flower), 2017, watercolor, pencil, and image transfer on paper. 21 x 16 in. Collection of the artist. Photo by Gene Young.
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Ginny Ruffner with Grant Kirkpatrick, Pyrus fenestrata (Pear with windows), 2017, sculpture (acrylic on handblown glass) and island (plywood, low-density foam, fiberglass, epoxy, sand, pebbles, and acrylic paint). Sculpture: 10 x 11 x 12 in. Courtesy MadArt. Photo by James Harnois.
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Ginny Ruffner with Grant Kirkpatrick, Avem iridis illuricae (Hummingbird flower), 2017, holographic image. Courtesy Ruffner Studio.
About the Exhibition
Ginny Ruffner (b. 1952) is an artist best known for her elegant sculptures and mastery of glass techniques. Recently, she has created work that combines traditional glass sculpture with Augmented Reality (AR) technology to create an interactive viewer experience. Visitors to the exhibition Reforestation of the Imagination will use a downloadable app that superimposes digital information over seemingly barren sculptures, creating two distinct realities to explore.
The installation consists of six islands, each featuring colorless glass sculptures of tree stumps. The landscape appears barren and bleak. Ruffner has imagined a gloriously complex and colorful alternative environment that viewers can access using AR’s technological lens. In this second reality, the stumps grow unique appendages of mythical flora. Ruffner designs these fictional species to adapt to their surrounding conditions in a means unexpected, beautiful, and optimistic. These plants have evolved from existing fruits and flowers, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. Reforestation of the Imagination calls into question our very notions of reality and fantasy, of concrete and abstract, and of desolation and hope, all while drawing attention to contemporary ecological issues. The installation also includes nineteen drawings that were the inspiration for the AR images.
Reforestation of the Imagination is a collaboration with Grant Kirkpatrick, a Seattle-based animator and media artist.