(b. 1952)
American
Born: Naples, Texas, U.S.
Nancy Rubins is a California-based sculptor and installation artist. She was born in Naples, Texas in 1952 and grew up in Tullahoma, Tennessee. She received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1974 and an MFA from the University of California, Davis, in 1976.
Rubins is known for repurposing scavenged objects including airplane parts, televisions, electrical appliances, mattresses, playground animals, and water heaters in her work. One series of public sculptures that she began in the year 2000, the "Monochromes," incorporated various kinds of boats held together by stainless-steel wire. Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, Built to Live Anywhere, at Home Here (2010–11), consisting of more than 60 canoes, is located on the campus of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. and quickly became a much-discussed local landmark.
Rubins resides in Topanga Canyon, California. She was married to sculptor and performance artist Chris Burden from 1987 until his death in 2015, and they collaborated on several projects. Rubins taught at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1982 to 2004.
For more information on Nancy Rubins's work, visit http://www.gagosian.com/artists/nancy-rubins. For video footage of a lecture by Rubins, see http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2015/02/ucla-department-of-art-lecture-nancy-rubins/.