Isabel Rucker is a multi-disciplinary artist living on the Mendocino coast of California. She works 2-D and 3-D media to explore color abstraction, shape, and environment. Recent sculptures and paintings are inspired by sunlight refraction, illumination, and reflection throughout the natural world. She finds phenomena like these stunningly beautiful but transitory in a way that appeals to her love of abstraction. Isabel also works figuratively and often begins a visual evolution by drawing and painting from nature. She is a professional jeweler fabricating metal, sculpting casting wax, and carving stones. Throughout her large and small, abstract and figurative, work she creates threads of visual connections.

In 2020, Isabel returned to the California coast from the Rocky Mountains. She grew up in the United States, young childhood was in New York, Virginia, and Germany and when she was eleven her family drove across the country to the California Bay Area where she spent formative young adult years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at University of Oregon. After college she returned to California, Santa Cruz and San Francisco. She met her husband in the Rocky Mountains and moved to Wyoming for 17 years. In Wyoming she expanded her jewelry business and art portfolio; there she also owned a retail gallery, made public commissioned sculptures, and exhibited paintings. She and her husband moved to Fort Bragg, California where she now has her studio and jewelry business. In 2025 she earned a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America.

EXHIBITIONS

2025 “Illustrations of Time,” Larry Spring Museum, Fort Bragg, CA

2024 “Sky and Earth,” Northcoast Artists Gallery, Fort Bragg, CA (February exhibit)

2021 “Coastal Spectra,” Larry Spring Museum, Fort Bragg, CA

2020 “September Glass,” Center for the Arts, Jackson, WY

2019 “Sky Remnants,” West Weird, Jackson, WY

2019 “Seeking the Light,” Art and Healing Gallery, St. John’s Medical Center, Jackson, WY

2018 “Seeking the Light,” Center for the Arts, Jackson, WY

2018 “Wonder + Beauty + Design,” Sublette County Library, Pinedale, WY

2013 “Wonder Cabinet: A Cabinet of Curiosities,” National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY

2013 “Best of WY!,” Jackson Hole Art Association, Jackson, WY

2012 “Silverspot: A Graphic Novel,” National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY

2012 “Soul Meditation,” Sublette County Library, Pinedale, WY

2011 “Exquisite Animal,” National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson, WY

2010 “Common Groundwork,” Sublette County Library, Pinedale, WY

2010 “Seasons of Change,” Sublette County Library, Pinedale, WY

2009 “Unfurling : This Land,” SOMArts Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2001 “Junk in the Trunk II,” Pop-up gallery, San Francisco, CA

2000 “Junk in the Trunk,” Pop-up gallery, San Francisco, CA

1999 Burning Man, Paintings for Kal Spelletich installation, Black Rock Desert, NV

PUBLIC ARTS

2020 “Giant Pacific Octopus,” (mural) The Box Shop, San Francisco, CA

2019 “Park’n’Gaze,” PARKing Day (sculpture) Jackson Hole Public Arts, Jackson, WY

2019 “Winter’s Jewels,” ArtSpot, (sculpture) Jackson Hole Public Arts, Jackson, WY

2015 “Quartz, Mica, Feldspar,” (sculpture) Pinedale Fine Arts Council, Pinedale, WY

ARTIST RESIDENCY

2017 Artist-in-residency fellowship, Jentel Foundation, Banner, WY

ILLUSTRATION

2005 “The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul,” nonfiction, Basic Books, 

2005. 560 pp, 148 illustrations

1998-2003  “Fact and Fiction,” issues #1-8, comicbook zine, self-published

1998-2001  “Cool Beans! Magazine,” comics, Cool Beans! Publishing

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REVIEWS

2019 Billy Arnold, “Isabel Rucker brings snow and hoarfrost back to the ArtSpot”

Jackson Hole News and Guide, June 12, 2019, www.jhnewsandguide.com/the_hole_scroll/isabel-rucker-brings-snow-and-hoarfrost-back-to-the-artspot

2019 Jenny Dowd, “Seeking the Light: Paintings by Isabel Rucker”, WyoFile, Jan. 22, 2019, www.wyofile.com/seeking-the-light-paintings-by-isabel-rucker/

2018 Frederica Cowley, “Art Center’s Solstice Show Explores Light”, Jackson Hole News and Guide, Dec. 19, 2018. www.jhnewsandguide.com/scene/arts/article_dac30fd3-33c0-559c-bf9a-f6091f89b2a5.html

2009 Carolyn Kellogg, “Isabel Rucker’s Long Long Memoir”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 5, 2009. latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/11/ruckers-scroll.html

INTERVIEWS

2018 Meg Daly, “Isabel Rucker on Seeking the Light”, KHOL, radio interview www.891khol.org/isabel-rucker-on-seeking-the-light/

LECTURES, ARTIST TALKS

2025 Artist talk, “Time, the Fourth Dimension, and Infinity”, with Rudy Rucker, Larry Spring Museum

2025 Artist talk, “Illustrations of Time”, Larry Spring Museum

2018 Artist talk, Seeking the Light, Center for the Arts, Jackson, WY

2016 Featured Artist Lecture, CLICK, Wyoming Arts Council state convention

2014 Artist talk, 20-20, Wyoming Arts Council state convention

2013 Artist talk, 20-20, Wyoming Arts Council state convention

EDUCATION

1996 Bachelor of Arts, Fine Arts, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR

2025  Graduate Gemologist, Gemological Institute of America, Carlsbad, CA

GALLERY AFFILIATIONS

Northcoast Artists Gallery, Fort Bragg, CA

Mendocino Jewelry Studio, Mendocino, CA

e-mail: isabel@isabelrucker.com

phone: (307) 231-0515