LAURA RUBY
Lecturer

Laura Ruby recently exhibited her "Nancy Drew Series" of prints at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and 1995 exhibited the prints there along with an installation sculpture, The Mystery of the Open Book. In 2001 she exhibited recent prints at the Ramsay Galleries in Honolulu, Hawai'i. The series is about the art of artmaking and the art of detection has also been exhibited at the Georgia Southern University Art Gallery, the Museum of Nebraska Art, Texas Wesleyan University East Room Gallery, Morningside College Eppley Art Gallery (Iowa), and Denison University Art Gallery. Her essay and selections of her prints from the "Nancy Drew Series" are published in Rediscovering Nancy Drew (University of Iowa Press, 1995).

Her ongoing "Diamond Head Series" currently has 54 prints, 7 drawings and 4 site-specific installation sculptures, and is about land and power in Hawaiÿi–about the exploitation of land, and its resources and people and their livelihoods. Colonialism, militarism and rigid Hawaiian social/political structures exerted control over land and people and the way nature itself is perceived. The natural world was and is divided, broken up and shattered, and the remnants were and are often measured, packaged and sold.

The artworks in her "Diamond Head Series" include the recurrent theme of mahele, the Hawaiian division of land, or general shattering of space. The enlightened Hawaiian land division, ahupua'a, gave people access to both land and sea, but ultimately restricted people's movements and fractured the islands. Arbitrary appropriations of land and exploitation of people and animals in Hawai'i appear in my artworks. Some victims of these cultural processes, for example, are the ÿiÿiwi and ÿoÿo, beautiful now extinct birds, sacrificed for capes and other ornaments. The visual forms of these artworks depict her fascination with this volcanic cone's entire cultural history. They include ancient Hawaiian lore and mythology, as well as contemporary governmental and military uses of Diamond Head and the Hawaiian archipelago.

In 1998 the "Diamond Head Series" was featured in Contemporary Impressions–Journal of the American Print Alliance, and there have been solo exhibitions of the series in California, Oregon, and on the Hawaiian Islands of Oahu, Kauai and the Big Island.

In 1994 she completed a large site-specific sculpture, Chinatown–Site of Passage, commissioned by the City and County of Honolulu. This artwork features the Honolulu Chinatown and waterfront neighborhood, including its history and physical structures of bridges and building profiles and roof lines in the community. She also received a grant from the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions to create and exhibit an installation sculpture, A View with a Room, at the Hawai‘i Loa College Gallery.

Recently her prints and sculptures have been shown in national and international juried and invitational exhibitions including "Creating Women" (Pennsylvania), "Shared Visions: The Art of Collaboration" (Washington), the "27th Bradley National Print and Drawing Exhibition" (Illinois), "Game Show" (Washington), "By the Palette, For the Palate" (Minnesota), the "13th Annual McNeese National Works on Paper Exhibition" (Louisiana), “Digital Elements” (New York), “East Is West in Hawai‘i," and the "17th University of Dallas Print Invitational" (Texas). Currently her print Landed Committee–Annexation, is part of the inaugural exhibition at the Hawaiÿi State Art Museum, and she was one of the Invitational Artists for 2003 in the “Artists of Hawaiÿi” exhibition held annually at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.