The Nature of The Beast

A comprehensive retrospective of artist Kathy Ruttenberg’s work in the past six years.

By Kathy Ruttenberg

Essay by Wendy Goodman

The Nature of the Beast is a comprehensive retrospective of artist Kathy Ruttenberg’s work in the past six years including ceramics, drawings, and watercolors. Her recent works are tempered by her travels to far-flung places like Antartica and the Falkland Islands. With texts by New York magazine’s Design Editor, Wendy Goodman, curator and art historian Charles Stuckey, and Elizabeth L. Bennett of the Wildlife Conservation Society, the book also features a tour of her amazing estate and studio in upstate New York where pigs, rabbits, chickens, and goats live in a bucolic and artistic surrounding. A conversation between Ruttenberg and Sir John Richardson on her 2014 exhibition at Stux Gallery in Manhattan is also featured. 

“Ms. Ruttenberg’s latest efforts make her a force to contend with as a narrator and symbolist, a form maker and colorist. Coating sexual tensions with a storybook innocence, she works in a triangle bordered by Louise Bourgeois, Viola Frey, and Beatrix Potter.” – Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Kathy Ruttenberg has built a career spanning three decades. Her work has garnered both critical acclaim and awards, and has been shown worldwide. For the past three consecutive years, Ruttenberg has had solo exhibitions at New York’s acclaimed Stux Gallery. In March of 2015, she had her work installed at the Roger Williams Botanical Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and was selected to participate in the 59th Faenza Prize International Competition of Contemporary Ceramic Art in Italy.

“Ms. Ruttenberg’s latest efforts make her a force to contend with.” —The New York Times

Hardcover

180 Pages / 9.5” X 12”