Ginny Ruffner was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Georgia in 1975. One of her first jobs was in a small shop as an apprentice lamp worker making small glass animals. In lampworking, glass rods are heated over a gas burner and shaped with tools or air blown into the hot glass through a tube. As her skills grew, she bought her own equipment and started making her own work beginning with goblets with fantastically unique stems such as dragonflies, crocodiles, and radishes. In the early eighties, Ruffner moved to Seattle to join the growing glass community in the Pacific Northwest and teach at Pilchuck Glass School. Her work is in a variety of museum collections including the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York, New York; Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.
Website
http://www.ginnyruffner.com
