Ruby Neri

She is based in Los Angeles, California. She previously worked as a graffiti writer in San Francisco, and used the pseudonyms Reminisce and REM.

• Name — Ruby Rose Neri • Other Names — Reminisce, REM • Born — 1970 • Birthplace — California, United States • Education — University of California, Los Angeles (MFA, 1998), San Francisco Art Institute (BFA, 1994) • Known for — Painting, sculpture, ceramics, graffiti, murals • Movement — Mission School • Father — Manuel Neri

Born to a family of artists, Neri was exposed to ways of making and expressing from a very young age. Her father is Manuel Neri, a prolific sculptor associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement, and her mother, Susan Neri, is a graphic designer. Her mother's ability to render realistic images of human figures and horses proved to have a heavy influence in Neri's early work as a painter and a graffiti artist in the 1990s, and as subjects still remain in her work today. The style that her father developed as a sculptor during the second generation of Bay Area Figuration also influenced Neri's work, which emerged later in her life as she made the switch from painting to sculpture. Comparing one of Neri's earlier figurative sculptures to the work that her father is best known for, a number of visual similarities are apparent and evoke the closeness of their relationship. Though their handling of materials, surface treatment, and subject matter are akin at first glance, a deeper look might reveal subtle yet important differences.

In 1994, Ruby moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, and would go on to earn her Master's of Fine Art from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1998. There, she made the gradual transition from producing mostly painting to sculpture. Her first foray into sculpture was through plaster, which she used to create abstracted figures of humans and horses in a style reminiscent of cubist painting. This transition was perhaps sparked by the fact that she was, for the first time, free of the impositions of her father's legacy. Her frustration with the weight of painting's history encouraged this transition into sculpture to continue. As Neri states in an interview for the Los Angeles Review of Books, “Painting is so demanding in terms of its history. The whole idea of what painting is became problematic for me and I didn't have the time to address all the issues that were not interesting to me at all...”.

Having exhibited since the mid-1990s, Neri maintains a stimulating artistic practice through a commitment to experimentation. Throughout her career, she has explored the possibilities in paint (oil, acrylic, spray), plaster, and clay - her current work is a visual culmination of those explorations. Neri deftly combines elements of figuration, abstraction, graffiti, and folk art through clay, plaster, and paint to create complex, expressive and kinetic sculptures. Lately, Neri has focused her practice and is primarily making clay sculpture. Neri uses horses as a common motif in her work, which serves as a personal symbol of her youth. Neri's most recent accomplishment is her inclusion in the book, “Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art”, published in 2017. The book is a global survey of one hundred of today's leading clay and ceramic artists - Neri is included alongside notable artists such as Anders Ruhwald, Edmund de Waal, Theaster Gates, Ron Nagle, Grayson Perry, and Betty Woodman. In an interview conducted for Phaidon, the publishers of “Vitamin C”, she notes the various ceramic artists she was surrounded by and exposed to throughout her childhood, including Richard Shaw, Viola Frey, Peter Voulkos, and Robert Arneson, amongst others. She also states that, “Although I was primarily a painter for many years, ceramics has been a major influence on how I approach materials and how I physically manipulate objects”. Despite and perhaps because of her lack of formal training in ceramics, Neri manipulates the material with a sense of naivety that demonstrates her belief that the history of ceramics is, like painting, “oppressive”. Neri states in the same interview that she is currently most excited by the work of Viola Frey, citing the scale of Frey's monumental pieces and her fearlessness as a woman working amongst men as key inspirations.

Neri is married with one child. Her family home burned down during the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.

The following is established of the heading itself.