“A Snail’s Pace” arrives at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum on Saturday, August 24, 2024.
Kathy Ruttenberg’s extensive career spans over four decades and includes painting, sculpture, animation, photography, and bookmaking. Since moving to upstate New York from New York City in 1992, she has become best known for her ceramic sculptures that conjoin human (primarily female), animal, and plant-based characters. These whimsical, storybook sculptures address poignant human experiences, from amorous entanglements to childbirth, while also urging a restorative and sympathetic connection to the natural world, particularly to animals. Ruttenberg finds her creative wellspring from time spent amid flora and fauna: “The most inspiring thing I can do is walk in a forest, finding my inspiration…the forest is where beasts dwell. The forest is where fantasy begins.”
A Snail’s Pace depicts a fantastical tableau of a life-sized woman crouched within a translucent snail shell. The bronze body of the snail is covered with incised linework depicting plants and animals. The resin snail shell, a feat of engineering and strength testing, creates a watery distorted filter for viewing the female inside. Cocooned in this snail’s shell the woman is protected from everyday noise, politics, or media. Ruttenberg notes, “The sculpture captures the disturbing moment of withdrawal when the cell phone is put down and the computer is unplugged. We have acclimated to a breakneck speed; dinner with an intimate often includes sending emails and texts; urbanites walk down the street oblivious to the world around them… all the new normal. Perhaps it is better to be in the “bubble,” moving like a snail, protected from life’s hectic pace.” This sculpture was originally shown as part of a major public art exhibition titled In Dreams Awake installed along Broadway in New York City from 2018-19. Now here at deCordova, A Snail’s Pace returns to a rural, restful realm.
About Kathy Ruttenberg
Born in Chicago, IL, Ruttenberg earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, majoring in animation and drawing. After living in New York’s East Village, she moved to Woodstock, New York in the early 1990s. This move led to not only the expanded scale of her practice through a larger studio but also grounds where she now provides a home for dozens of rescued animals. She has produced five short, animated films and has contributed to animation projects for the children’s television program Sesame Street. She has shown extensively in New York City and beyond, including solo and group exhibitions at Clay Art Center (Port Chester, NY), Berkshire Botanical Garden (Stockbridge, MA), and Roger Williams Park Botanical Center (Providence, RI). Public commissions and outdoor installations include sites at Battery Park (New York), Mamiraua Sustainable Development Reserve (Amazonas, Brazil), and Tisch Children’s Zoo (Central Park. New York). She is represented by Lyles and King Gallery, New York.