By: Sonora Slater for The Dirt
In 1992, Ruby Neri was at art school in the Bay Area, spending her free time graffitiing wild horses galloping across walls on the streets of San Francisco. More than 30 years later, her life looks a little different—but her art, which has been featured in galleries throughout New York, Paris, London, and now, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in Davis, California—retains the same freehanded color, bold, loose lines, and personal signatures indicative of her early works.
Neri is a ceramicist based in Los Angeles known for her brightly colored female sculptures, which reflect both her own experiences of womanhood and motherhood and her thoughts about control, chaos, and the inner space. Taking the Deep Dive is the artist’s first solo museum exhibit, poignantly hosted on the campus of UC Davis, where her late father and renowned sculptor Manuel Neri worked as a member of the art department from 1965-1990.
Taking the Deep Dive is a recognition of Neri’s career, which she described as a true journey —describing how she fell in love with the same medium her father was so known for after initially rejecting it.
“When I was at the Art Institute, I didn’t go near the sculpture department,” Neri said. “I took one ceramics class and they immediately were talking about my dad, and I was just like, ‘Fuck this. I’m not gonna make sculpture.’ So I was just painting. But the minute I went to UCLA, I completely did an about turn. I started making sculpture immediately, and it was really kind of amazing.”
To Neri, a huge draw of the medium is its tangibility and immediacy. This allows her to take a very hands-on approach and helps her feel a connection to the materials she’s using, something she says drew her to graffiti in the first place.
Her first foray into sculpture was with plaster, which she mixed, carved and painted on. This led her to her first show in 2009, the same year her daughter was born. She started working on the show when her daughter was three-months old, bringing her along to the studio, sculpting and breastfeeding.
“I was super scared to tell [the show organizer] that I was pregnant, because women always have to worry about that kind of stuff,” Neri said. “But I started working on the show when [my daughter] was three-months old, and it was kind of nuts, but I felt really creative and full of life.”
From there, Neri experimented with closed-off figures that emulated the internal life and mind, as well as other pieces centered around the idea of repurposed vessels. But something clicked when she switched from plaster to ceramics: Her work got a lot more personal.
“As an artist, it’s really fragile to put your work out there in a gallery,” Neri said. “People talk about it, and they’re looking at you and at your work, and there’s always these comparisons. I always felt that it was much easier to make art that was about art and not really deal with myself. But I think I finally […] wanted to make work that was about how I felt at that time.”
So how was she feeling, exactly?
“My life was just insane,” Neri said. She was juggling her career and her family, taking her daughter to school, working at the studio, picking her up from school, returning to the studio, finally getting home around midnight, rinse, and repeat — all while maintaining a tight partnership with her husband. “It’s everyday stuff, but it just seemed particularly crazy at that time,” Neri said. “But I really wanted to make this work. It was really important.”
When you look at Neri’s work or hear her talk about it, it’s easy to see how her personal life began to shine through in the finished product. She started incorporating multiple figures into each work, many with bigger and smaller figures. This ties into the idea of whether parents control their kids’ lives or their kids control the parents, she said, but also ties her pieces to a wide range of other possible interpretations. The control a career can have over us, the everyday struggle, fertility, and the way time and experiences are transformative, to name a few.
Through Their Eyes
The Manetti’s winter collection also features the museum’s first large-scale group exhibit featuring only women. Through Their Eyes is comprised of works that span more than three decades, created entirely by women artists. The common themes are palpable.
“These artists are grappling with the same issues across a time span of [many] years,” Associate Curator & Exhibition Department Head Susie Kantor said. “Through the long and ongoing conversation around these topics, we are reminded that while progress has been made in some areas, there’s still much work to do. As I look around the exhibition and I look at Ruby’s exhibition, I’m also reminded that these fiercely original and groundbreaking artists are showing us that in so many ways, we are already there.”
Taking the Deep Dive runs through May 5; Through Their Eyes runs through June 22. The Manetti Shrem Museum is located at 254 Old Davis Road, Davis.
