W. Steve Rucker Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1954 -

W. Steve Rucker was born in Cleveland, Tennessee next to farms, factories, and illegal stills.

Art became as interesting to him as hot rods, basketball, girls and the Beatles at an early age.

After receiving the Senior Art Award at Bradley County High School, his studies began at Cleveland State Community College (Associate of Art-1974), and lead to Middle Tennessee State University (BFA-1977) and Louisiana State University (MFA-1979).

He was a Visiting Artist and Instructor at Newcomb College, Tulane University 1979 – 1981.

He retired Emeritus Professor from Loyola University New Orleans in 2011 where he has taught ceramics, painting and drawing since 1981.

He has produced over 19 one-person exhibitions and site works, and 5 CD’s of original music.

He has lectured and provided workshops at over 22 colleges, universities and art centers.

He has served as Judge and Juror for exhibitions and fellowship grants in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and the City of New Orleans.

Rucker has been nominated for the National Endowment for the Arts’ “Awards in the Visual Arts” on five occasions.

He received a Sculpture Fellowship Award from the Southern Arts Federation in 1991, an Artist Fellowship Grant from the State of Louisiana Division of the Arts in 1982 and 2005, and four Summer Faculty Research Grants from Loyola University.

His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Atlanta Art Papers, Sculpture Magazine, The New Art Examiner, ARTnews, and the Times Picayune among many other publications.

Rucker maintains a studio near the Mississippi River in the Carrollton neighborhood of New Orleans, where he continues to ‘fish’ for visual and musical solutions to his and everybody’s blues. . .