11 Facts About Ruth Duckworth

Ruth Duckworth was a modernist sculptor who specialized in ceramics, she worked in stoneware, porcelain, and bronze.

Ruth Duckworth is best known for Clouds over Lake Michigan, a wall sculpture.

Ruth Duckworth later studied at the Hammersmith School of Art and at the City and Guilds of London Art School, where she learned stone carving.

Ruth Duckworth insisted that she wanted to study all of them; after all, she replied, Michelangelo had done so.

Ruth Duckworth married the British artist Aidron Duckworth in 1949 and they later moved to the United States in 1964, where Ruth taught at the University of Chicago's Midway Studios and Aidron was a visiting professor of sculpture at the University of Illinois.

Ruth Duckworth's work started to fall into a middle ground that wasn't the typical ceramics thrown on a wheel and fired in a kiln or the standard forms of sculpture that used metal, stone or wood.

In 1964 Ruth Duckworth accepted a teaching post at the University of Chicago's Midway Studios.

Ruth Duckworth remained there through the next decade, eventually deciding to settle permanently in the United States, her third homeland.

Ruth Duckworth's 240-square-foot mural Clouds Over Lake Michigan is a figurative depiction of the Lake Michigan watershed.

Ruth Duckworth remained in Chicago after retiring from the university in 1977 and moved to a space in the Lakeview neighborhood on the city's North Side, in a former pickle plant.

Ruth Duckworth had a hole in the floor of her second-floor living quarters, which allowed her to view works in progress in her studio and to envision how they would look on a wall.