Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination

Many people believe technology will one day obliterate all life on Earth. Seattle-based glass artist Ginny Ruffner isn’t necessarily one of those people. Organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, her exhibition Reforestation of the Imagination seems to propose the opposite: that imaginative technology might be a saving grace. Slated for Asheville Art Museum this fall, the exhibition consists of a bleak and blighted landscape of glass tree-stump sculptures that sprout new, whimsical life when viewed through an augmented-reality app. As the museum explains, “These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds.” The show will run concurrently with Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, an immersive experience that “visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.” This October, the museum will also open a curated display of more than 100 works from the comprehensive DeMell Jacobsen Collection, including important examples of mid-19th-century landscape painting.