About David Ruth

DAVID RUTH is an Oakland, California-based sculptor crafting large-scale cast glass, sculptural forms and architectural features for over 30 years. Known for virtuosic glassmaking, earlier vibrant colors and later subtle casting colors, with a juxtaposition of polished surfaces against highly textured geological elements, his work has been featured in architecture, museums, and galleries worldwide.

Born  and raised in Berkeley, California, demonstrations against the Vietnam war, tear-gassing the city by Governor Reagan and soldiers with bayonets were prime memories of high school.

At ten, his parents sent him to an arts and crafts class where he was introduced to glass mosaics. After college at the University of California at Santa Cruz, an artist introduced him to Roger Darricarrere, who melted his own dalle-de-verre slabs in Los Angeles for use in his own concrete and thick stained glass windows.  Ruth has been working with hot glass since, almost fifty years later.

After college he started a small studio for melting glass.  With investors, he enlarged the studio with furnaces, recycled bottle glass and made stained glass sheets.  After graduate school, he melted thick glass castings for sculpture, experimenting with fusing different color formulas within a single glass body.  Critically aware of the unique 5000-year history of the material, Ruth pushed the envelope of glass techniques combining de-scaled industrial processes with artistic expression.  Cast glass sculptures were produced, swirling colors in thick sections which took weeks and even months, to cool down successfully.  Some were quite large for their time, weighing up to 1,500 lbs (700Kg).  These pieces were what he called his Internal Life Series, marking the interior of the glass body as a canvas for thought through swirling colors and bubbles trapped inside, revealed through highly polished surfaces.

In 2006, Ruth was awarded a National Science Foundation, Antarctic Artists and Writers Program grant, for an expedition to Palmer Station, Antarctica. His project was to take texture molds off glacier ice and stone for use in his sculptural projects.  The overall title for this work is  The Chill Project, featuring the Geologic Editions and Series and experiments with other media including recreating the forms in ice and casting paper pulp as a soft physical alternative to glass, and watercolor.  Today, the studio thrives on large-scale projects for public art and architecture.