Ruby Jackson, artist

"The Sag Harbor sculptor Ruby Jackson established her credentials many years ago with engaging pieces that combined whimsy and a bit of philosophical humor. More recently, inspired by coral reefs and a variety of vegetation, she has been creating a wide range of inventive, semi-abstract, organic forms in fired clay. Many rely on rhythmic repeats of serrated surfaces, tonal changes or scarifications. Some look like scaled-down ritualistic towers.

The most compelling group presents evocative arrangements of rolled, thin clay fragments. These pieces take their edge from a subtle blend of recognition, pattern and some disquieting elements like burn marks. "Trunks," a stack of five fragile forms with the appearance of miniature elephant trunks, is especially successful."

Phyllis Braff, The New York Times, Sunday, February 8, 1998

"Ruby Jackson creates personal fantasy realms that are both delightful and a bit bizarre. Miss Jackson makes little room settings of brightly colored plastic dough and seals them in acrylic boxes. They look like miniature three-dimensional versions of David Hockney's California obsessions - gaudy, hermetic and yet seductively attractive.

The material itself, molded and sculptured with infinite patience to a pristine finish, is at once appealing and disquieting, almost repulsive. It is for us to imagine what sort of strange tiny people might inhabit these cute but claustrophobic spaces."

Helen Harrison, The New York Times, February 14, 1982

"Ruby Jackson's new work, inspired by snorkeling trips in Jamaica and Belize, touches some dramatically different chords as she strives to represent a real world that is nevertheless totally abstract and foreign to human beings. Using brilliant and vibrant coloration and textures to capture the movement and exotic lights of the undersea world of coral reefs, the works are simultaneously totally real and absolutely interpretational."

Eric Ernst, The Southampton Press, Feb. 12, 2004

"Ms. Jackson makes drawings in ink, what looks like glitter, and the occasional flower petal. She also makes little vitrines filled with interwoven, multicolored tendrils and corkscrews of material that resembles melted plastic.

The worlds she has created are like glimpses through a diver's mask at coral reefs and the ocean floor, but with the colors intensified nearly to the point of fluorescence and the already exotic forms further stylized.

The splashy drawings, lightly crusted with glitter, are reminiscent of tacky greeting cards but their otherworldly imagery is absorbing. In the construction "Caribbean Triptych," three glass boxes like little aquariums hold intricate marine shapes that seem to float."

Robert Long, The East Hampton Star, February 26, 2004

"While Ms. Jackson's abstract multimedia style is familiar to many viewers, her current series possesses and unusual dimension, literally. The artist goes beneath the water to give us a subjective view of the sea world; by so doing, she also expands our notion of life and death. And all those experiences in between.

Ms. Jackson's life-affirming encounter with the underwater world is vibrant, colorful and glittering.

Conversely, the artist's pieces evoke a near-death experience as well. This ambiguity is one of Ms. Jackson's strongest traits, her technique reinforcing the idea with its contradictory preciseness and spontaneity."

Marion Wolberg Weiss, Dan's Papers, March 5, 2004

Sculpture and Jewels

Sag Harbor sculptor Ruby Jackson will have her work on view starting May 19 in one of Manhattan's most visible and prestigious venues - the windows of Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue and East 57th Street. For the fourth time since 1975, Jackson's abstract, fired clay sculptures were chosen by Gene Moore, the 84 year-old Tiffany vice president, who, for nearly 40 years, has designed more than 4,000 of the famous store's often whimsical window displays. Jackson's works will serve as centerpieces for jewelry and gems, all fashioned with themes reflecting the sea.

"My sculptures were inspired by underwater life, something that's always fascinated me," she said. Moore praised Jackson's work, saying he knew her sculpture's undersea themes would fit perfectly with the jewelry on view. "She sees beyond what inspires her," he said. "To see her work is to want to get to know her. What she does is both exceptional and unusual."

Bill Kaufman, Newsday, Wednesday, May 11, 1994

Fantasy Sculpture

The fantasy creations of Sag Harbor sculptor Ruby Jackson are among the work of 15 artists going on view in an exhibition that debuts Aug. 7 at the Benton Gallery in Southampton. Jackson's sculpture has drawn critical praise because of its offbeat nature and for some of the tecniques she uses. For example, to create her large, abstract forms, Jackson said that she ties together balloons and pours plaster over them. "As the plaster hardens, the balloons break leaving behind bizarre shapes that appear to have been carved,"* she said. Another of Jackson's sculpture methods involves sealing colored bits of plastic dough in acrylic boxes to create decorative three-dimensional displays. Helen Harrison wrote in The New York Times that they looked like "versions of (painter) David Hockney's California obsessions - gaudy, hermetic and yet seductively attractive." Jackson laughs when describing where some of her other work has ended up - such as her hand-carved wooden street signs used by Sag Harbor Village. Other large gilded wooden signs she chiseled out advertise fish dinners at Gosman's Restaurant in Montauk.

*The shapes have been carved. -RJ.

Bill Kaufman, Newsday, Wednesday, July 28, 1993

Jackson Sculptures Convey Images of Life and Death

If pop painter Roy Lichtenstein, famed for his funny-papers rendering of a single brushstroke, interpreted the underlying form in "Satellite," an abstract sculpture by Ruby Jackson in Voorhees Gallery, it would look like a malformed bone.

The sculpture, bleached white and bent out of one shape into another in a continuous dynamic network, makes one think of a column of vertebrae gone haywire. The tangled, twisted osseous-like matter, made of Hydrocal, even appears to writhe as it takes its over-all form, which looks like eons-old debris from outer space. Or the encalcified remains of an early human.

The biomorphic mass conveys the invincibility of bones, as well as the fragility. Its resemblance to an ossified organism expresses death and durability at the same time.

"Satellite" also brings to mind biomorphic sculpture by other artists, like Henry Moore's '50's work "Internal and External Forms." Indeed, although the ins and outs of the Moore example are less linear than those of Satellite," his title suits it perfectly.

A second Jackson abstract on display, "White Castle," another intricat play of biomorphic shapes and shadows dissolves and solidifies before one's eyes. But unlike "Satellite," it looks more like flesh than bone. The overall shape resembles a mass of fleshy figures that 19th century figurative sculptor August Rodin might have carved out of stone.

But though Jackson's work conjures up masterworks of the past, it bears a look of its own. Unexampled, evocative, "Satellite" and "White Castle" make a visit to Voorhees Galleries worthwhile.

Joan Altabe, Art Critic, Sarasota Herald Tribune, Sunday, August 27, 1989

Nice Cubes - Fantasy rooms from sculptor Ruby Jackson

Ruby Jackson thinks of bedrooms as "intimate, private places, whee fantasy exists," To give you an idea what she means, one of her designs (titled "Sex and Violets') features a bed headboard carved to resemble male and female torsos. But before you call her up to design your fantasy bedroom, be forewarned: she's a sculptor whose rooms are seven-inch cubes encased in glass.

Jackson, who moved to Sarasota several months ago from New York, is a self-trained artist. Her most recent and most successful pieces are the small environments she creates using a special kind of children's modeling clay. She first became interested in these carefully crafted cubes while living in a small New York City apartment ("I was struck by so many different kinds of people living in cubes") and started out with dining room and kitchen settings. But a client's request for a "love nest" whetted her interest in bedrooms, and now she uses clay, silicone, glass, and a variety of unique shapes and ideas to suggest fantasy bedroom environments.

Take "Jungle," for example, a piece where the bed is shaped like a wild mushroom. Or "Good Easter," a food fantasy consisting of a Kaiser roll bed, tomato pillows, a lettuce blanket, and green pasta curtains curling down the walls. Another piece,"Magician" features a deck of cards as the bed and stacks of coins forming a night table, while the curtains are squares reminiscent of a magician's scarves.

Jackson says the small, highly detailed pieces take months to finish, and adds that the "lush greenery and magnificent light" of Sarasota have already influenced her greatly. While she also works in other types of sculpture, she says the miniature rooms "get a positive response from all ages, all walks of life." They sell for about $800 apiece at the Joan Hodgell Gallery.