ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Paul Rucker - Visual artist, cellist
Paul Rucker creates art that explores issues related to mass incarceration, racially-motivated violence, police brutality and the continuing impact of slavery in the US.

Why you should listen

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, 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 particular subject matter. Much of his current work focuses on the Prison Industrial Complex and the many issues accompanying incarceration in its relationship to slavery. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration. Presentations have taken place in schools, active prisons and also inactive prisons such as Alcatraz.

His largest installation to date, REWIND, garnered praise from Baltimore Magazine awarding Rucker "Best Artist 2015." Additionally, REWIND received "Best Solo Show 2015" and "#1 Art Show of 2015" from Baltimore City Paper, reviews by The Huffington Post, Artnet News, Washington Post, The Root and The Real News Network. Rucker has received numerous grants, awards and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014 and 2018 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund Grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received 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 Culture.

Residencies include 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. He was most recently awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2018 TED Fellowship and the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation and Artist Trust. Rucker is an iCubed Visiting Arts Fellow embedded at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Rucker's latest work, Storm in the Time of Shelter, an installation of 52 custom Ku Klux Klan robes and related artifacts, is featured in the exhibition "Declaration," on view at the new Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia through September 9, 2018.

More profile about the speaker
Paul Rucker | Speaker | TED.com
TED2018

Paul Rucker: How my mom inspired my approach to the cello

Filmed:
387,890 views

Multidisciplinary artist and TED Fellow Paul Rucker has developed his own style of cello; he puts chopsticks between his strings, uses the instrument as a drum and experiments with electronics like loop pedals. Moving between reflective storytelling and performance, Rucker shares his inspiration -- and definitely doesn't play the same old Bach.
- Visual artist, cellist
Paul Rucker creates art that explores issues related to mass incarceration, racially-motivated violence, police brutality and the continuing impact of slavery in the US. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

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(Cello music)
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(Music ends)
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On the flight here,
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I was reminded about my mom.
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I'm a self-taught cellist,
I've never had a lesson.
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I studied double bass, but I just
picked up the cello and started playing
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because I love doing it.
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But my mom was an inspiration to me.
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I did not realize she was an inspiration,
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because she got her music degree
through a mail-order course,
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the US School of Music.
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While raising two kids,
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she received a lesson a week in the mail,
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and practiced.
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And at the end of a couple of years,
she put on a recital.
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And I'll be 50 this month,
and it took me that long to realize
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that she was that big of an inspiration.
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I'm just going to keep --
yeah, thanks, mom.
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(Applause)
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She's also one of the most
extraordinary people I know,
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beyond being a wonderful musician.
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I want to play a little bit for mom
and your moms as well, actually.
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(Cello music)
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(Music ends)
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You know, when you normally
hear a cello, you think of this.
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(Plays Bach Cello Suite No.1)
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We're not going to do that today.
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(Laughter and applause)
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02:35
(Drums)
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(Cello)
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Hey!
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(Looped samples of onstage sounds)
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(Cello music and looped samples)
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(Music ends)
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(Applause and cheers)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Paul Rucker - Visual artist, cellist
Paul Rucker creates art that explores issues related to mass incarceration, racially-motivated violence, police brutality and the continuing impact of slavery in the US.

Why you should listen

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, 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 particular subject matter. Much of his current work focuses on the Prison Industrial Complex and the many issues accompanying incarceration in its relationship to slavery. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration. Presentations have taken place in schools, active prisons and also inactive prisons such as Alcatraz.

His largest installation to date, REWIND, garnered praise from Baltimore Magazine awarding Rucker "Best Artist 2015." Additionally, REWIND received "Best Solo Show 2015" and "#1 Art Show of 2015" from Baltimore City Paper, reviews by The Huffington Post, Artnet News, Washington Post, The Root and The Real News Network. Rucker has received numerous grants, awards and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014 and 2018 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund Grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received 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 Culture.

Residencies include 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. He was most recently awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2018 TED Fellowship and the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation and Artist Trust. Rucker is an iCubed Visiting Arts Fellow embedded at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Rucker's latest work, Storm in the Time of Shelter, an installation of 52 custom Ku Klux Klan robes and related artifacts, is featured in the exhibition "Declaration," on view at the new Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia through September 9, 2018.

More profile about the speaker
Paul Rucker | Speaker | TED.com