Ginny Ruffner, whose exuberant embrace of art, technology, and the power of imagination defined a life of overcoming obstacles and expanding the possibilities of expression through glass art, died at the age of 72 at her Seattle home earlier this week. Ruffner studied drawing and painting at both the undergraduate and graduate level at the University of Georgia (BFA 1974, MFA 1975), where she became intrigued by glass as an art medium after encountering Marcel Duchamp's paint-on-glass work Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (2015) in an art history class.
After graduation, an apprenticeship at German-born Hans Godo Frabel's lampworking studios in Atlanta trained her in the traditional lampworking techniques she would harness for her bold career in sculpture, which she pursued in earnest after moving to Seattle in 1984 to teach at Pilchuck Glass School.
Ruffner was never one content to stay within the expected limits, and she quickly established herself in the art world as one of the first female artist to combine glass, paint, and metal. By the mid-1980s, she was showing her work at Habatat, Heller, and Traver galleries. Her work was acquired by major museums, and can be found in permanent collections of the Museum of Art and Design as well as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and at the Toledo Museum of Art.
For a special survival-themed issue of Glass: The UrbanGlass Art Quarterly (#159) published in the Fall 2020 issue during the Covid pandemic lockdowns, Ruffner shared details of the devastating 1991 car wreck that almost took her life.
Five weeks in a coma, five months in the hospital, five years in a wheelchair. The doctors told my family to pull the plug. They didn't. They said to my family, "Oh, She'll never wake up." When I woke up, they said "She'll never walk again." I had to learn to do so, so I could tell them to go jump in a lake.
While she so generously shared her advice for overcoming obstacles in life -- "humor and determination" were her secret, she said -- Ruffner preferred to look forward rather than backward because "you never go anywhere looking backward."
On January 20, the touring exhibition "Reforestation of the Imagination" closed after five months on view at the Ashville Art Museum, completing a six-museum tour since 2021. In the exhibtiion Ruffner combined her glass sculptures with digital overlays, viewable by visitors downloading a purpose-built app for their phones that superimposed another layer of Ruffner's drawings over what the naked eye might have seen as barren landscapes. The work was a powerful metaphor for how art and imagination empower us to see a reality of our choosing. Ruffner's world, both her literal Seattle home as well as within her fertile mind, was always expansive, lush, and ripe with limitless possibility.
Her passing is a massive loss, but we can take solace in her advice for weathering the pandemic, which applies to life in general and embodies Ruffner's extraordinary courage, honesty, and generosity.
The one constant in the universe is change. Wherever you are--it will change. But don't just sit there--direct the change. And most importantly of all, don't forget to laugh!
Ruffner is survived by her brother and two sisters, in addition to extended family. A ceremony honoring Ruffner's life is being planned for the spring. In the meantime, donations to solaseattle.org, a non-profit dedicated to supporting mature female artists, are suggested in lieu of flowers.