Kent Rucker's Art

 My very first multi-media pieces were made when I was seven. They were people made of paper and string. Of course I didn't know that they were multi-media pieces until I went to college. Many artist try to get back to the impulses of their childhoods. At seven I made those pieces purely for my own enjoyment. I pretended that  the edge of the carpet was the horizon line, and  there my little people acted out their dramas. I named the game "Squirm."  When I was done, I lfted up the edge of the carpet, pushed my people underneath until the next day. That idea of  combining different media to make a statement is thousands of years old. Chinese kites made from leaves, twigs and and human hair.

 'Man Trap' has materials that resonate with the human experience. Ken dolls, satin sheets ,wood. I showed thiese three scuptures at a gallery in Denver. It was interesting to hear what people thought I meant. I never said what  I intended  to say with the composition.

Doing art  for me has always preceeded any spiritual practice that I have acquired. There came a point where I stopped trying to force my self to be inspired, relaxed and just let it happen. The trickle became a river. Actually more than that happened.  One afternoon over coffee, I chatted with a friend who told me a story that in turn another friend had told him.

Once there was a boy who stood at the bottom of a ladder which was propped against the garage. At the other end of the ladder, on the roof of the garage where his brothers were painting, his  father yelled down to him to climb up the ladder and help them paint. The boy was four and so frightened that he could only make it up to the second rung. His father enraged  not only picked up a paint brush and threw it down at him, but also told him to stay down there and paint with the girls.