Four large silkscreens on bark paper from Bhutan will be shown in cyc wall by Donna Ruff, who was an artist-in-resident at Deering Estate from 2019-2021, where she spent her residency researching the relationship between Charles Deering and botanist John Kunkel Small.

Small, chief botanist at the New York Botanical Garden, spent years exploring and documenting the wilds of South Florida in the 1920s. The title, Terra Incognita, is Latin for “unknown land”, as Florida at that time was largely the territory of Indigenous Peoples, exotic creatures, and tropical plantlife. The silkscreens are based on Small’s own photographs of landscapes taken on and around the Deering Estate grounds. Small’s book From Eden to Sahara: Florida’s Tragedy (1929), helped stimulate conservation efforts in South Florida to protect endangered lands that eventually brought about the creation of Everglades National Park in 1947.The substrate, handmade Resho paper, is known for being sustainable and durable, and includes bits of natural substances. 

About the artist:

Donna Ruff is an American visual artist, curator and educator currently living and working in Miami, Florida. She works in mixed media on found printed matter, primarily newspaper headline pages and historical documents. Ruff questions how written and photographic narratives are constructed by removing and transforming printed text and image to recontextualize the portrayal of world events. Ruff earned an MA in Art History from Florida State University and worked as a graphic designer and book illustrator in Miami and later in New York City. She earned an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. During her graduate studies Ruff was introduced to printmaking and papermaking at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper and began incorporating these techniques into her art discipline. Ruff’s work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), The Print Center (Philadelphia, PA); New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM), Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL), Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum (Mesa, AZ), Center for Book Arts (NYC), Mass MOCA, Sol Lewitt Exchange (North Adams, MA), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI), A.I.R. Gallery, New York, (NYC) and ArtSPACE New Haven (New Haven, CT). Ruff has worked as an artist in residence at PS 122 (NYC), Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NM), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, (Berlin, Germany), Deering Estate (Miami, FL) and Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM)