Paul Rucker (American, b. 1968)

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who combines media, often integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions surrounding a subject. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration, racial injustice, and the history of slavery.

Rucker has received numerous grants and awards, including a recent Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital grant, Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors award, Mary Sawyer Baker Award, the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship, and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, for which he is the first artist in residence at the new National Museum of African American History and Culture. He has had residencies at MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Centre, Pilchuck Glass School, Rauschenberg Residency, Joan Mitchell Residency, Hemera Artist Retreat, Air Serembe, Creative Alliance, and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Rucker is currently an iCubed Visiting Arts Fellow embedded at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2017 he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Image courtesy of the artist.