By Tony Reid ’79<\/p>\n
Brittany Coburn \u201917 and Professor Nick Ruth collaborate on \u201cIn the Shadow,\u201d an exhibition shaped by shared experimentation, technical exchange and mutual respect.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you become a teacher, by your pupils you\u2019ll be taught,\u201d wrote Oscar Hammerstein II for a song in \u201cThe King and I,\u201d and that\u2019s being played out by Professor of Art and Architecture Nick Ruth and Brittany Coburn \u201917.<\/p>\n
Coburn is co-curating an exhibit called \u201cIn the Shadow\u201d at the RAM Gallery in Summit, N.J., where she works. Ruth is one of the exhibitors. Coburn not only brought Ruth into the show, but she also taught him the technique he used to make three of his six pieces on display.
\nAt HWS, Coburn took just one class, abstract painting, from Ruth but began to work with him in 2023 after she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design and began to make her way in the world as an artist. When she came back to Geneva, Ruth hired her to teach him.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy interests are broader than my skill set,\u201d Ruth says, \u201cso I recognize the value of collaboration when I want to do something that I don\u2019t know how to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Street signs form the visual theme of Ruth\u2019s work in the show. Three of the pieces are photogravures \u2013 printmaking plates with grooves etched in them that give the photographic prints depth, texture and, to the theme of the show, shadow. They are prints of street signs \u2013 more specifically, the backs of street signs. The other three pieces are plaster reliefs \u2013 raised shapes \u2014 of street signs. This is what Ruth hired Coburn to teach him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI taught him how to make the molds and work with this material,\u201d Coburn says. \u201cIt\u2019s cast in hydrocal, which is a stronger version of plaster. Sculptors love it. It\u2019s smooth and clean. Very stark.\u201d <\/p>\n
Even in her role as teacher, however, the eternally inquisitive Coburn says she continued to learn from her former instructor. \u201cIt was an awesome experience for me to work with something in such detail that wasn\u2019t mine,\u201d Coburn says. \u201cHe\u2019s such a stickler. It was a great lesson for me in understanding why attention to detail is so important. When you\u2019re doing it for someone else, it\u2019s not your level of expectation, it\u2019s theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The signs concept developed during Ruth\u2019s commute between Geneva and his home in Rochester. He says he noticed the rise of cell phone towers and started to see them as objects. \u201cThey were interesting to look at,\u201d he says. \u201cTheir bones. The shapes and the engineering were really interesting to contemplate.\u201d This led him to think about communication in the modern world, he says, \u201cabout technological change and culture. I ended up having similar thoughts about billboards and road signs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coburn has a solo show opening on Friday, Feb. 6 at the McEachern Art Center at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. It\u2019s a 10-year retrospective of a theme she began to explore in Professor of Art and Architecture Phillia Yi\u2019s silk-screen print-making class. \u201cGuilty Pleasures\u201d explores themes of mental health and the negative stigmas that surround it in contemporary society. It is, Coburn says, \u201can analysis of all the guilty pleasures that people lean into instead of going to therapy and asking for help.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy objective is to use my art to educate and to create a safe space for people to be vulnerable,\u201d she says. \u201cThe more we talk about it, the more normalized the conversation becomes.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is no coincidence that Coburn recruited Ruth for the show in Summit, which runs through Feb. 22. She credits her experience at HWS and her relationships with her professors as elemental to the artist and the person that she has become.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy time at HWS really helped me discover who I was as a person and what my real passion was for,\u201d Coburn says. \u201cIt made me feel like I had a purpose. I had professors who made me feel that a career in the arts was attainable. Until I went to graduate school, I didn\u2019t realize how rare this was.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/NicholasHRuth_ThisWayII-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/NicholasHRuth_ThisWayII-600x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Meghan","author_link":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/?author=5"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theramgallery.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}