Ginny Ruffner, the pioneering Seattle artist and innovator who helped put Seattle on the map as a national hub for glass art, died Monday in her Ballard home. She was 72. Ruffner’s death was confirmed Wednesday by her gallerist, Sarah Traver, and close friend, Seattle artist and educator Marge Levy.
Known for intricate glass and metal sculptures that fused art with science and technology — as well as her wit, joyful personality and wild salt-and-pepper curls, which mirrored her exuberant glass pieces — Ruffner was perpetually curious about art, science and life. Her favorite project, she liked to say, was whatever was next. “Pretty much everything in the world makes me laugh or makes me curious, or both,” she said in a 2020 interview .
Throughout her career, Ruffner reinvented both herself and the glass art genre by reclaiming “decorative” techniques and later incorporating cutting-edge technology like virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Ruffner made her way to the top of her field as well as major institutions like the Seattle Art Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among many others. Throughout her trailblazing career, Ruffner defied the odds.
First, by transforming lampworking — a glass-torching technique (rather than glassblowing) long dismissed to the realm of tchotchkes — into a contemporary art form. Then in the ’80s, by rising to the top of the male-dominated glass art field. And,.