♥ Ruby ♥

We want to extend our thanks to visiting artist, Ruby T. for guiding students, staff, and faculty in creating beautiful marbling works of art. The vibe in the studio during these workshops will be one to remember. Everyone came out in droves and stayed long after to continue expressing themselves with this medidative art form!

𝘗𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘦, 2026, Oil on birch panel, 23.5 x 23.5 in.    Last day for 𝘈 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴𝘪𝘢 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭. Thank you @sheetcakegallery  ♥︎♥︎♥︎     Image description: a square oil painting on birch panel. Misty swirls of fuchsia and pink hues (plus reds and browns) surround a steep amphitheater painted in translucent purples. The amphitheater descends into invisible depths.

It’s Friday and it’s time to share our next Visiting Artist! Next week, Ruby T. (she/her) willl be joining us in the studio. She will be teaching a series of water marbling workshops. Students will have the opportunity to marble fabric, paper, and other materials. Ruby will be also visiting Kate Leonard’s Graphics class and teaching a Staff & Faculty Wellness workshop. If you want to dive into all things marbling, register on Summit now!⁠ ⁠ Ruby’s work is an experiment in translating fantasy to reality. She is fueled by anger, desire, and magic. Rooted in drawing, her practice as an artist, educator and organizer has offshoots in painting, print, fibers, comics, and video. She has exhibited and performed at Farm Projects in Wellfleet, MA; Western Exhibitions, Roots & Culture, Iceberg Projects in Chicago, Hales Gallery in New York, and Bass & Reiner in San Francisco. Her comics and illustrations have been published by Half Letter Press, and are displayed in Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. She currently resides and works on Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Osage land, also known as Louisville, KY.⁠ ⁠ Welcome to the Arts & Crafts Program, Ruby!

𝑨 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒂𝒍 𝒖𝒏𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒅, 2026, oil and acrylic on birch panels, 41h x 26.5w in.   ⚝ ⚝ ⚝ ("A revival unleashed," along with "Use me in ways that only he can," are excerpts from statements made by Erika Kirk during her CBS town hall appearance hosted by Bari Weiss. )   ⚝ ⚝ ⚝ image description: a collection of four panels, fit together to create a vertically oriented rectangle. The largest panel is a square in the upper left, containing another audience portrait featuring seven people, at a 3/4 angle, facing left. The three in the back row have their faces and eyes tilted upwards, and the man in the middle (who happens to be the college student who was talking to Charlie Kirk when he was shot and killed) faces straight ahead, locking eyes with us. The second largest of the three panels bordering the central panel is painted abstractly in hot pink, purple, and violet (all hues of fuchsia or fuchsia-adjacent). The others are painted in greens, reds, and more fuchsias. Similar to the previously posted painting, the people are painted in visible and translucent brushstrokes of white, yellow, peach, green, gray, and blue.

𝓤𝓼𝓮 𝓶𝓮 𝓲𝓷 𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝓱𝓮 𝓬𝓪𝓷, 2026, oil on birch panel, 23.5 x 23.5 in.  Up at @sheetcakegallery thru 4/25.   I wrote about this piece and the whole show on substack. Here’s an excerpt (+ linkinbio if you want more) —>    Another one of my fellow queer Jewish women obsessions/ disappointments is Bari Weiss. Recently appointed by super-heir David Ellison to lead CBS News, the blatantly Islamophobic Bari Weiss cut her teeth harassing Muslim and Palestinian professors as an undergrad at Columbia, before founding her Silicon Valley-billionaire-funded Substack, The Free Press. In her first months at CBS, she hosted a town hall with Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, who has taken over as CEO of his fascist Christian youth organization Turning Point USA. Charlie Kirk once described her as more extreme than him.     Some of the paintings in this show are made from screenshots of audience members watching as Weiss asks Kirk pointless questions and audience members ask Kirk vetted questions, and nobody challenges her whatsoever. Kirk herself is fascinating to watch, seething and off kilter with eyes that narrow and widen abruptly. She spouts what I think are religious idioms (some biblical, some pop-Christian--if that's a thing?) and is met with applause. The slightly bored faces of most of the audience are punctuated by a few people with their eyes upturned, likely towards a screen, but the immediate reference for me was the rapture depicted in so many religious paintings from antiquity and onwards. Later, as I kept painting, I thought of the glassy eyes of the white mob in the horrible 1930 photograph taken after they lynched Black teenagers Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana (the same photo that inspired Abel Meeropol to write “Strange Fruit,” sung with the utmost gut wrenching feeling by Billie Holliday). And then of course the 1941 Weegee photograph “Their First Murder.”    I made these paintings while listening to the town hall audio, several times over. [continued in comments]

Installation views from A fuchsia brighter than hell by Ruby T // on view thru 04.25.2026. Come see us! Ruby T’s multidisciplinary practice—spanning painting, drawing, performance, and fibers—examines the power and limitations of fantasy within an oppressive social landscape. In this new body of stitched and painted works, the artist contends with the psychic and visual overload produced by rapid-fire media consumption, translating its fragmentation into layered, materially rich compositions. Developed during and following a recent move to Kentucky, the work takes as a conceptual point of departure the HELL IS REAL billboard along I-65 in northwest Indiana. Ruby reframes “hell” as both an immediate political condition and a tool of ideological control—at once lived reality and projected threat. Across these works, she constructs a symbolic lexicon of scrolls, flames, amphitheaters, clouds, and faces, set against densely collaged surfaces of silk, velvet, drop cloth, and wood. Moving fluidly between observation and fantasy, Ruby saturates her compositions with fuchsia, embracing both its chromatic instability and its conceptual resonance through Gertrude Stein’s linguistic play, where “future” gives way to “fuchsia.” This substitution resists linear time, insisting instead on a recursive present: as it was, as it is… not to the future, but to the fuchsia. Photos by our love Houston Cofield. #rubyt #sheetcakegallery

𝒟𝒶𝒻𝒻𝑜𝒹𝒾𝓁 𝓅𝑜𝓌𝑒𝓇 𝓉𝑜𝓌𝑒𝓇 𝓈𝑒𝒶𝓈𝑜𝓃, 2026, acrylic, dye, and oil on pieced silk, velvet, drop cloth, hand-marbled and found textiles, with beaded embroidery and handmade silk rose. Supports made from fallen trees in Louisville, KY, 80h x 105.5w in.    Image description: horizontally-oriented large-scale tapestry. In the center, a red, tongue-like scroll emerges from a steep and bottomless amphitheater. The tongue-scroll is caged in a somewhat provisional and ornate tower, painted against a flat dark sky from which two giant daffodils emerge. Blocks of beaded and marbled silk, pieced velvet, and another, smaller, quilted amphitheater punctuate the central action.    The tapestry hangs from a wooden dowel and found-wood brackets, which are carved into sharp spears on all ends, the tip of each dipped in fuchsia.

𝓐 𝓯𝓾𝓬𝓱𝓼𝓲𝓪 𝓫𝓻𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓷 𝓱𝓮𝓵𝓵, 2026, Acrylic and dye on hand-marbled silk with appliqued suede, 35h x 48w in.    swipe for the cake twin 🙂‍↕️!    Up at @sheetcakegallery thru 4/25     image description: a horizontal painting made on a piece of double-marbled silk. The central image is a scoop, or bulb-like shape, opening at the top of the frame, and bisected vertically by three drooping pieces of turquoise suede fringe. On the left side of the fringe, the marble is painted over with deep reds, muted blues, greens, and purples. An abstracted devil figure struts from the left edge of the frame towards the bulbous shape. On the right side of the fringe, the marble is almost saturated with hot pink and fuchsia. An abstracted woman figure runs out of the bulbous shape, with just her lower leg and high-heel poking out of the hot pink and into the surrounding red field. Following the first image are some detail shots, as well as a cake made to look like the painting.

opening tonight at @sheetcakegallery in memphis 😎😘

Very excited to share new work this month! My solo show 𝘈 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴𝘪𝘢 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 opens at @sheetcakegallery in Memphis on March 28. So looking forward to visiting and hanging <3    𝘍𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘥, 2026, Acrylic and dye on joined silk and drop cloth with machine embroidery and handmade silk roses, 35h x 48w in.    ID: a horizontally stretched substrate made from pieced silk and drop cloth. The silk is smooth and transparent next to the rough and opaque texture of the drop cloth. The silk is sewn in the crude shape of an open laptop in the piece's center. In the middle of the lapstop is a large purse holding a burning candle surrounded by squiggly dancing stars. Behind the purse is a sheet of clouds that wraps scroll-like over the laptop. The golden flame-like pattern in the painting's background covers both the silk and drop cloth pieces, and mimics the pattern on the purse. The lining of the purse is a bright fuchsia.

HNY bebs. 2025 was the year I stopped treating this app like a box of kleenex / emotional support vape. please lordx give me the strength to continue in 2026 + may we see an end to the brutal death cults, a freed Palestine, Sudan, and Congo, and a fully fucked ice. I love you and I miss you. XOXO Ruben Fuchstenblatt

𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓁𝒾𝒸𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝓈𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓂 𝓅𝓊𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓃, 2025, dye, acrylic, and oil on joined silk, with hand-marbling and beaded + machine embroidery, 44 x 44 inches