Ruth Laskey is an American artist known for her

Minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

weavings and grid paintings.

Biography

Laskey was born in

San Luis Obispo, California ; ; ; Chumashan languages, Chumash: ''tiłhini'') is a city and county seat of San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. Located on the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of California, San Luis Obispo is roughly halfway betwee ...

in 1975. She graduated from the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

in 1997 with a degree in Art History. She received a B.F.A. from the

California College of Arts and Crafts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a Private university, private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened ...

in 1999 and an M.F.A. from the

California College of the Arts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...

in 2005. As of 2015, Laskey lives in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

Work

Although Laskey has often grouped with

fiber art Fiber (spelled fibre in British English; from ) is a #Natural fibers, natural or Fiber#Artificial fibers, artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The st ...

ists, her real contribution has been to the discussion of painting. Laskey came to weaving through painting. Beginning by making her own paints and weaving her own canvases, she started to paint individual threads that incorporate her designs into the canvas itself, calculating for color fades and interactions. Laskey's weaving/paintings are created painstakingly, taking months to weave after first completing a planning stage of preliminary graph drawings. Laskey maintains rigorous control over the elements of her work—although she follows Minimalist methods of precise and orderly construction, her work is also predicated on the craft ethos of Modernist weavers like

Anni Albers Anni Albers (born Annelise Elsa Frieda Fleischmann; June 12, 1899 – May 9, 1994) was a German-Jewish visual artist and printmaker. A leading textile artist of the 20th century, she is credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft a ...

and

Gunta Stölzl Gunta Stölzl (5 March 1897 – 22 April 1983) was a German textile artist who played a fundamental role in the development of the Bauhaus school's weaving workshop, where she created enormous change as it transitioned from individual pictoria ...

Awards and honors

In 2016 Laskey won the Artadia Award. In 2010, she won the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's SECA Art Award.

Exhibitions

Laskey's solo exhibitions include: * Quadrants, Capital Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2016) * Ruth Laskey, Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA (2010) * Six Weavings, Galerie Cinzia Friedlaender, Berlin Germany (2009) * Song Song, Vienna, Austria (2008) * 7 Weavings, Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA (2008) * Disarticulate, Build Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2004) * Familiars, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA (1999) * Recent Paintings, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA (1999)

Selected collections

The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

References

External links

Ruth Laskey weaves form and surface

THE ARTICULATION OF TWILL: Ruth Laskey
{{DEFAULTSORT:Laskey, Ruth 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists 21st-century American women painters Painters from California Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area American weavers American women textile artists California College of the Arts alumni Living people 1975 births