Nancy Rubins

Nancy Rubins
Big Edge
Born	1952 Naples, Texas
Nationality	American
Education	Maryland Institute College of Art University of California, Davis.
Known for	Sculpture, Installation artist, Photography
Spouse(s)	Chris Burden
Awards	American Academy of Arts & Letters, Academy Award in Art (2003) Rockefeller Foundation Travel Award (1993)

Nancy Rubins (born 1952 in Naples, Texas) is an American sculptor and Installation artist. Her sculptural works are primarily composed of blooming arrangements of large rigid objects such as televisions, small appliances, camping and construction trailers, hot water heaters, mattresses, airplane parts, rowboats, kayaks, canoes, surfboards, and other objects. Works such as Big Edge at CityCenter in Las Vegas contain over 200 boat vessels. Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, Built to Live Anywhere, at Home Here, at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, contains 66 used aluminum boats and rises to a height of 30 ft.

Rubins was born in Naples (Texas) and grew up in Tullahoma, Tennessee. She studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, where she received her BFA in 1974, and then at the University of California, Davis where she received her MFA in 1976. Rubins currently resides in Topanga, California and taught at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1982 to 2004.

In college Rubins worked primarily with clay, creating igloo-like sculptures out of mud, concrete, and straw. Rubins avoided the characteristic permanence of ceramics with the constant disassembling of sculptures, collapsing her work back into the slip bucket or back into raw scraps. Her 1974 piece, "Mud Slip, Army-Surplus Canvas and Used Cups from Coffee Machine" combined found materials with wet clay; it lasted only as long as the clay stayed wet. Her creation of unlikely assemblages grew as she began to incorporate more detritus and found materials into her work.

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