STATEMENT OF WORK

Time leaves its imprint on everything — etched into landscapes, embedded in material, and captured in light. My work in photography and cast metal preserves these imprints, acting as vessels of memory that hold the remnants of geological and historical time.

Photography and casting function as parallel yet distinct processes of preservation. Photography captures fleeting moments, translating time into light and shadow, while metal casting records physical traces, transforming material into lasting form. Together, these media reveal the silent narratives held within objects: the way metal bears the marks of its transformation, just as light is captured through the lens.

The cast forms echo ancient geological structures, while my photographs of gnarled olive trees, shaped by centuries of wind, water, and human cultivation, all speak to nature’s endurance. By bringing together earth and metal, image and form, this body of work meditates on the effect of time’s slow, persistent passage.

The chain-link fabric forms are introduced into the landscape as agents monitoring the landscape. They are at once an object and a catalyst to their surroundings, making one more aware of the changing light and the environment.

I think of my work as revealing the enduring presence of the past within the present.

Quotes

The tension between tradition and technology, between nature and civilization, is not only evident in the photographs on display but also finds a powerful outlet in the sculptures that appear throughout the exhibit.

Spending time with the pieces on display is humbling, the way that great art so often is. Climate change, the relationship between man and nature, the vastness of geological time, and our relative insignificance are all conveyed through images and objects of great aesthetic beauty.

Elizabeth Hazen, BmoreArt, April 23, 2025

There’s a pleasing irony in Ruppert’s work. His fine craftsmanship and mastery of sculptural and photographic techniques imbue his work with a quality of strength and physicality, yet his ideas are rooted in an exploration of the eternal process of change. The hardest rocks are worn smooth and round; the tallest tree is splintered by a flash of lightning. Throughout his work, time, the fourth dimension, is as palpable as solid form. Only one thing can be counted on and that is that time will change everything.

Mary McCoy, Chestertown Spy, October 1, 2015

Ruppert's work has always been both substantial and refreshing in its optimism. Many bemoan the ill effects of the industrial age on the environment. Ruppert is perfectly aware of industry's depredations, but his work, by marrying elements of the natural and industrial worlds in thoughtful ways, argues that such a union might be possible on a larger scale.

John Dorsey, Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1997

Time ... “This, I think, is the source of their [metal castings] modernity, for they are always in the process of change, at sometimes visible, at other times just below the threshold of the viewer’s perception.  In a sense, these pieces are “about “ the abrasion of time, the most powerful of all natural forces,”

Alan Artner, Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1996