Ruenell Foy Temps
Birth Date: May 4, 1940
Death Date: March 14, 2020
Artist Gallery
Ruenell Foy Temps started sculpting early in life, brimming with originality and inventing new forms. As a toddler, she was raised in an overcrowded foster home, where she was sometimes locked in an attic closet. To escape her situation, she would spend hours alone in the backyard, building forms from the adobe clay that resided there. When she turned seven, she moved with her grandmother to Twentynine Palms, California, near Joshua Tree. This area would inspire Ruenell's future sculptural work with its large boulders, uniquely shaped sand dunes, and vast beauty. Ruenell enrolled at the University of California at Davis in 1958, choosing the major that most girls were encouraged to pursue: home economics. Taking an art class as an elective, she switched majors to art and took as many art and design classes as she could fit into her schedule, studying under legends such as Wayne Thiebaud and Ronald Peterson. Halfway through her junior year, she married and moved to Berkeley, where she began studying ceramics at College of Marin with Edwin Cadogan, head of the art department and founder of its ceramics program, who recognized her talent for working with clay and encouraged her to spend as much time as possible in the clay studio. That is also where she found her love for sharing her knowledge of clay and art in general with other students and renewed a long-time desire to teach. Ruenell enrolled full-time at San Francisco Art Institute as a painting major, a bachelor degree being the first step toward a teaching credential. She studied there with Tom Holland and Sam Tchkalian, who introduced her to Peter Voulkos, who headed up the ceramics program at the University of California at Berkeley. After getting her BFA, Ruenell applied for the master degree program at SFAI and was unanimously accepted by the entrance committee. Two weeks later she received a letter of rejection, which she subsequently learned was because they belatedly realized she was female. Based on what Voulkos saw in the ceramic work Ruenell did at College of Marin, and later at her first home studio, he cut through late application tape at U.C. Berkeley and welcomed Ruenell into his master degree program in ceramics. Here she studied under Voulkos and Ron Nagle. She taught at the College of Marin, in design, painting, and drawing, and introduced a class in materials and techniques. In 1971, she graduated with her MFA in design, with an emphasis in ceramics. Ruenell was an accomplished artist in both ceramics and painting. She switched between clay and oil pastels to keep her ideas fresh in both mediums. Unlike her clay that evolved without considering what would sell, her oil pastels were designed to appeal to and were widely accepted and promoted by retail galleries and decorators. Ruenell was known for the simplicity of her objects, juxtaposed with intricate sculptural details. She is best known for her hand-built, press and drape molded stoneware sculptural vessel forms, salt-fired in a gas kiln. Salt firing is a process used where salt is introduced into a kiln at a high temperature. The salt vaporizes, and sodium vapor combines with the silica in the clay surface, forming an extremely hard sodium-silicate glaze. Ruenell rarely used a single method to build a piece; her work was usually made using a combination of wheel throwing, slab, press-molding, extrusion, carving, indenting, and hand-building techniques. According to Ruenell, “I listen, working with clay, until the sculpture takes over...the sculptures guide me and seem to complete themselves." Many of her works employ architecturally referenced forms and, although they may have elaborately styled handles, there is an allover control and ordered surface. Her work scale varied, she could accomplish forms from tabletop functional pottery to monumental sculptures. She would spend a great deal of time changing and refining her work, continually pushing herself, saying, "I cannot accept less than perfection from myself. In my work and in my life, I give all I have." Ruenell was part of the influential 1950s California art scene where ceramics moved away from traditional pottery and towards sculptural and expressive forms. In 1974, she was artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado, where she met and worked with ceramicist Paul Soldner. From 1962 to 2011, Ruenell's work won awards and acclaim nationwide. Throughout her lifetime, she conducted hundreds of clay workshops, including in Australia. Ruenell's work is in numerous collections, including the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA, The American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA, the Ceramics Research Center Museum at Arizona State University, the International Museum of Dinnerware Design in Ann Arbor, MI, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY, and many others.