Ruth Nickens

Ruth is a glass and mixed media artist who is compelled to explore the world through her overactive and tangled imagination. For her entire life she has been fascinated with sparkly things, beads, and anything made of glass. Her artwork liberally incorporates all breeds of repurposed treasures—from small vintage gems and “found” objects, to larger hammered metals, machine parts, and even vintage ship portholes. Ruth is best known for her playful stained-glass creations, often described as colorful and whimsical. She also dabbles in mixed media sculpture, collage, and photography. Her work over the years has been an organic evolution, paralleling her own life journey. Each piece of her work, if you look closely enough, contains bits and fragments of herself. Raised in a family of artists, her childhood home teemed with cabinets of art supplies. Her adult home is the same way. Her greatest creative influences were her bohemian mother, who taught her daughters to sew before they could walk, and her woodworker/sculptor/tinkerer grandfather who, for fun, took his granddaughters to junkyards in search of treasures. Pieces of Ruth’s artwork live in businesses, homes, houses of worship and galleries locally, nationally, and abroad. She has been in zillions of art shows and exhibits over the years.