Growing up, Rusty Scruby’s grandfather tatted, his sister, mom and grandmother knitted and crocheted, and his dad had learned to knit when he was young, so it seemed natural for Rusty to learn to knit. He became fascinated by the many ways that a single long strand of yarn could turn into so many structures and Rusty marveled at the combination of engineering, beauty, and imagination. He immersed himself multiple times in knitting, sometimes spending several months in exploratory projects as if in a self-imposed residency. In the early 2000s, knitting led him to his “cube network” series, which are 3D works with an interlocking cube structure. This platform or base has continued as an ongoing vein in Rusty’s work. This led to a re-investigation of fabrics and to some of the imagery used in the exhibition “Cube Network.”.
For the past 10 years, my work has focused increasingly on structure and the idea of an interaction between structure and image. The combination of hand-crafted and analytical aspects in my work helps to create a tension. The resulting emotional expression stems from this interaction of limited parameters, similar to numbers in music and knit and purl in knitting. In my current work, I am focusing primarily on Cube Network structures.
Cube Network was inspired both by knitting and geometry. The idea that a 2-D image could translate into multiple 3-D structures reinforces that an image can be subordinated into merely a symbol, a vessel for information. With my cube network pieces, image and other information repeats spatially where it had repeated across a 2-D surface in earlier work.
Years ago I had the idea of creating a scale out of repeating visual information. I wanted to compress more information into the images I was using as a way of creating a “visual frequency.”
My artwork has been an exploration inspired by my lifelong passions of music, math, and knitting. Beginning with the mathematical breakdown of music and the creation of my repeating/shifting-image constructions, I am attempting to understand the connections between abstract numbers and real-world experiences. What is the difference between listening to someone speak and listening to music? Questions tend to lead me in my work from one body of work to more questions and then to more work. In that way, I feel that I have been on a long and interesting journey over the past 25 years. — Rusty Scruby
Rusty Scruby: Cube Network
Exhibition Dates: November 20 – December 15, 2020
Turner Carroll Gallery
725 Canyon Road
Santa Fe, NM 87501
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