Dennis enthusiastically reviews Private Myths/Private Dreams: “Kathy Ruttenberg is an American artist from the Hudson Valley. Her home and studio are also part animal sanctuary, which is why and how I'd first heard of her. She’s originally a painter but also known for her sculptures – many of which were featured around the Upper West Side in 2018 in a site-specific exhibit sponsored by the Broadway Mall Association.
My favorite was Snail’s Pace, on Broadway and 96thStreet, which was a human figure captured in a snail’s shell and raises the issue of the quick pace of our city and a nightmare for a NYer to be forced to move at the speed of a snail.
Her works often show the natural world transformed into a fantasy world.
At the Francis M. Naumann Gallery, her work is currently on view in Private Myths/Public Dreams. Many studies (drawings, paintings, and sculptures in smaller scale) were displayed including a work on paper called Snail Study which I liked the most for many reasons. Seeing the sculptures together in one space gave me the opportunity to feel their interactions and I sensed the reality more than the fantasy – as opposed to seeing them in giant scale far apart from each other along the Broadway Mall with pigeons perched on them and tourists taking selfies which brought them into an unrealistic world (to me). The difference might have been their being indoors, well-lit, safe, and under watchful eyes instead of outside and alone and often in the dark.”
