Ruth Stanford
Professor Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design- Biography
Ruth Stanford received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005 and a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000. She also holds BS and MS degrees in zoology and worked as an endangered species ecologist prior to beginning a career in art. Before joining the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design faculty in 2005, Stanford served as an adjunct professor at Chatham College and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, and the University of St. Francis in Illinois.
Stanford’s art practice revolves around installation and site-specific sculpture. Much of her work explores history and notions of presence/absence, permanence/impermanence, fiction/reality, and conscious/subconscious. She has exhibited in traditional and nontraditional venues, including The Mattress Factory and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh; The Creative Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin; Atlanta’s Center for Civil and Human Rights; Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh; Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta; Kyoto International Community House in Kyoto, Japan; and the National Art Gallery of Zambia in Livingstone, Zambia. Ongoing academic interests include the history, politics, and aesthetics of memorialization, particularly in Africa.
Exhibitions include
Double X. Herberger College School of Art Step Gallery, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
Talent Show: The Atlanta Biennial. Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Atlanta, Georgia.
Metal Art. Foundry Art Centre, Saint Charles, Missouri
All Together Now. Creative Research Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin.
Recent exhibitions include
A (new) Genre Landscape, City of Atlanta Public Parks, Atlanta, GA
Cryptoecology, Eyedrum Gallery, Atlanta, GA
What Remains. The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA;
Scenescence, Future Tenant Art Space, Pittsburgh, PA;
Hidden in Plain Sight / The Forest in the City. Three Rivers Arts Festival Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA;
Musee de Monoian, New York, New York;
Art All Night, Lawrenceville. Pittsburgh, PA;
Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards Exhibition.
Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton NJ;
CASA. Fe Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA;
LOOM 3. Chatham Label Mill, Pittsboro, NC;
Shock and Awesome. Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA;
AMP: An Exhibition of Local Artists at the Warhol. Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA;
November 22, 1963: Image, Memory, Myth, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA;
Contemporary Art Celebrating Life, Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, PA.