thenationofartists.com

Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival)

Directed by: Karen Stanton
Starring: Ginny Ruffner, Dale Chihuly, Leslie Jackson Chihuly, Dorit Ely, Graham Graham, Tom Robbins and Graham Nash

Ginny Ruffner, a pioneer of large-scale lampworking (working glass under heat to form a shape without the necessity of glassblowing), has led a storied life. By bringing us to her current home, and then transporting us back to Ruffner’s roots in South Carolina, director Karen Stanton provides glimpses of the familial support and cerebral associations from which an artist was born and bred.

With artistic advertising campaigns for Absolut and Bombay Sapphire utilizing her unique works and the world at her feet with successful national exhibitions in Seattle and elsewhere, Ruffner was sidelined by a three-car collision in 1991 that initially rendered her unable to move or speak. Ruffner’s family was advised to pull the plug: Given her lack of brain activity and the excessive duration of her coma, a functional future was severely unlikely. However, Ruffner’s sheer tenacity enabled her to overcome her injuries and re-establish her artistry. Perhaps there’s a power in her medusa-like hair, forever reaching and reacting.

With comments from Dale Chihuly, Tom Robbins, Graham Nash and others, Stanton has attempted to capture some of that resolve on-screen in “A Not So Still Life,” a title that reflects both the title of an early Ruffner work and Ruffner’s refusal to submit to those debilitating injuries.

Shot mostly around Ruffner’s current property, the film makes clear that Ruffner’s mind is now as much reflected in her house, atria, gardens and surrounds as in the pieces for which she’s been well known for more than two decades. In explaining the continuity of her work, despite the physical obstacles, Ruffner sums it up best: “My art is thinking. … I think.” Indeed, creativity is not physically tangible, and it can continue to evolve and succeed without physical boundary.

While we’re led to observe Ruffner’s inner life, her close friends and family, we’re exposed only to the context of her work by her representatives, friends and admirers. An external assessment of its merit and its place in the global art market would have served the director well, providing some objectivity with which to further appreciate the mind being explored.

Also, mostly as a result of Ruffner’s speech being affected, the documentary has a quiet tone and could have benefited from greater movement to lift the piece from the occasional static.

Still, Ruffner’s work is beautiful and has been captured with stunning clarity, supported by an innovative website at which more of her art can be experienced. There is no doubt that this is a woman with the power to weld ideas into constructs that provoke conversation, and now she has been shared with a greater audience through this documentary. One can only wish Ruffner more strength to continue to innovate and invent the world at large with her unique insight and humor.

Photo: Ginny Ruffner is the subject of “A Not So Still Life”; photo courtesy the filmmaker