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!
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 lil round up of art up in Memphis, Chicago and Dallas for you fine folks.
A fuchsia brighter than hell // on view in Memphis thru 04.25
Ruby T
Use me in ways that only he can, 2026
Oil on birch panel
23.5" x 23.5"
Dallas Art Fair // Booth D10 // thru 04.19
Joel Parsons
Last Call (The Saint), 2026
Silver nitrate on stained glass, cast glass, wool
25" x 22"
David Onri Anderson
Surrender to the Night, 2022
Acrylic and graphite on raw canvas
18" x 18"
Barely Fair // Chicago // thru 04.19
Amelia Briggs
Pebble III, 2026
Nylon, fiber, fabric stain, gouache
7" x 7"
#rubyt #joelparsons #davidonrianderson #ameliabriggs #sheetcakegallery #dallasartfair2026 #barelyfair
We are open today starting at 11 AM and open late for our neighborhood art crawl from 4 - 7 PM! And don't forget about our next HI//LO event on 04.23 with Bar Limina and special guest, Timothy Faulkner, from the Michelin rated Whoopsie's Place in Atlanta, GA. Cocktails and small bites inspired by the art on the walls at the gallery. Come hang out!
Anchoring Ruby T's exhibition, A fuchsia brighter than hell, is the large-scale, quilt-like tapestry Daffodil power tower season, in which a red, tongue-like scroll emerges from a vertiginous amphitheater. Here, Ruby invokes the Tower card from tarot—a symbol of upheaval, rupture, and radical transformation. Through intricate passages of beaded and marbled silk and pieced velvet, she imbues the work with tenderness and devotion, foregrounding the emotional and collective labor required to endure and move through periods of instability.
Ruby T
Daffodil power tower season, 2026
Acrylic, dye, and oil on pieced silk, velvet, dropcloth, hand-marbled and found textiles, with beaded embroidery and handmade silk rose. Supports made from fallen trees in Louisville, KY
80" x 105.5"
#rubyt #edgedistrictmemphis #sheetcakegallery
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
March: A tenacious, yet soft voyage of taking back my smile💛
Honestly, this past month was filled with being extremely intentional about my joy; making sure that I don’t let my light go dim from some of what’s been happening in the background lately. To protect and edify my peace, surrounding myself with things, moments and people who bring me happiness by simply being present, has been key.
In a phase where I’ve had to balance principle, fairness, holding others accountable for their decisions despite their discomfort, boundaries, strength, exercising the power of “no” as a sentence rather than a suggestion, becoming more resilient to what the world throws my way all while still finding a way to remain soft . . . I’ve used spring as a roadmap to my happiness rather than simply a season.
Flowers, family, and pushing myself to meet personal goals and doing the internal work to remain a beautiful human so that I may never contribute being the cloud in someone’s day.
When working to operate from a base of joy with the goal of bringing that same feeling to others through creativity - even the sun gets to rest☀️
Also - sticking to my meal plan and water routine is doing the trick (Swipe through and to the end)💅🏾
May April be filled with tides of intentional - and unexpected - joy that wash away anything that no longer belongs to our reason for happiness! #DavidQuarlesIV | #ChooseJoy
On view now thru 04.25.2026, come enjoy these luscious paintings by Ruby T! The gallery is open Thursday//Friday from 10 AM - 5 PM, and Saturday from 11 AM - 5 PM.
Ruby T
Pour into me, 2026
Oil on birch panel
23.5" x 23.5"
#rubyt #sheetcakegallery
A March Madness round up from your good friends at Sheet Cake. Choose your own adventures!
// Grief Talks facilitated by MengCheng 梦城团 Collective // 03.16 from 6 - 7:30 PM
// Munch and Learn with Roger Allan Cleaves // 03.18 at Dixon Gallery & Gardens at 12 PM
// HI//LO cocktails and small bites with Bar Limina & Good Fortune Co // 03.19 at Sheet Cake starting at 5:30 PM
// Art by Design with ArtsMemphis at the Agricenter // 03.25 - 29
// A fuchsia brighter than hell with Ruby T // opening 03.28 at Sheet Cake from 5 - 7:30 PM
Roger Allan Cleaves
Banana Republic of Oz, 2025
Oil on canvas
36" x 36"
detail Leanna Hicks Carey
The Oracles Helm, 2025
Oil on canvas
48" x 48"
Roscoe Hall
Arrows, 2025
Acrylic-3,100g, Pastel-1,000g, Sativa Pre Rolls- 2, Burlap-10g, Torn kids sweater- 30g, Turmeric Pigment-800g, Thoughts of letting go of my edge., 1 Gallon Evian water (never seen this.. rare beverage ), and love on Canvas
50" x 40"
detail Ruby T
#marchmadness #mengchengcollective #rogerallancleaves #rubyt #roscoehall #artbydesign2026
Ruby T, Wooded to the brink of the sea, here through Monday.
The exhibition’s title is taken from Mourt’s Relation, a 1622 account of the Pilgrims’ arrival on Cape Cod. In it, the peninsula is described as “wooded to the brink of the sea,” a phrase both lush and foreboding.
For the artist, this description invokes a mournful inquiry: How did Nauset and Wampanoag stewardship shape the land prior to colonization, and what was lost when European settlers clear-cut old growth forests?
How do we contact the sublime in the midst of ongoing land theft and climate catastrophe?
Long mythologized as the Pilgrims’ first landing site and later as a haven for queer freedom, the Outer Cape is entangled in dispossession and liberation alike. Ruby situates herself via a cryptic iconography of vines, X’s, flowers, and corn– twisting through incongruous realms of fear and desire.
plimoth interior with velvet flames, 2025, oil and acrylic on velvet inlaid on drop cloth, 18 x 24 inches
Ruby T, wooded to the brink of the sea here through November 03.
chalice with storm pushing in, 2025, dye, acrylic, and oil with beaded and machine embroidery on silk, 44 x 44 inches
