Ginny Ruffner
American, b. 1952
Beauty Learning from the Past, 1989
Lampwork glass and mixed media
Here, the winged figure of Beauty, derived from the ancient Greek monument the Nike of Samothrace, stands atop a dinosaur’s skeleton. In this piece, Ginny Ruffner utilized a glass-making technique called flameworking, in which glass rods are heated and then manipulated with small tools and hand movements to achieve the desired form. Ruffner’s small, delicate glass works playfully combine seemingly disparate elements together that tease the eye and challenge the mind. In doing so, Ruffner explains she has developed “a language of those long-stretch connections, this gestalt of the absurd.”
Gift of Lisa Jan Rose and Kenneth L. Koenig, MD and Sara Jane Rose and Jay Shanker, 2021
Visual Description: This is a glass sculpture of a figure standing on the back of a dinosaur’s skeleton, roughly a foot tall and almost two feet long. The figure is missing their arms and head and has golden wings extending out from their back. The figure’s body is midnight blue and wears a yellow tunic. The white, lustrous skeleton under the figure is long, with four legs and a tail. In the dinosaur’s mouth is a yellow rope, extending out from the sides of its mouth and up on either side of the figure’s wings.
