Guest Faculty Lecture: Ruby Neri and Katy Barkan

Aug 3, 2025 7PM-8PM

Schermer Meeting Hall

Sunday and Tuesday evenings, June through September, Anderson Ranch features a slideshow presentation by distinguished faculty members and visiting artists. These insightful talks dive into the artists’ inspiration, their creative process, and more.

This presentation is free and open to the public and is available in person or via livestream.

Registration is appreciated. All on-campus workshop students will be pre-registered for this event.

Speaker

Ruby Neri

Ruby Neri (b. 1970, San Francisco) draws upon 20th-century West Coast traditions and a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes. She depicts the human body as a porous instrument of pleasure, terror, and everything in between, placing her in a lineage of Los Angeles-based artists like Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy. Her focus on hand-driven craft connects her to the Bay Area Figurative and Funk movements. Over the last 20 years, Neri has been a leading figure in the revival of ceramics as a contemporary art medium. Her vessels evoke earthy tactility and psychological intimacy, while her use of sprayed glazes links her ceramics to the street art she produced in the late 1990s as a member of the San Francisco-based Mission School, blending contemporary urban art with the archaic power of pre-historical wall-painting and object-making.

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Katy Barkan

Katy Barkan is principal of Now Here, a Los Angeles-based architecture practice working at the intersection of the speculative and the everyday. Her work includes buildings, furniture, exhibitions, and collaborations with artists. She was a Rome Prize fellow in 2021, and teaches at UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Design.

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