Ruth is an African American artist and former visual arts teacher who uses fabric and mixed media to make original wall quilts and other art objects. Her work is inspired by the history and culture of Americans of African descent.

She feels impacted as well by other African American artists and writers, particularly from
a period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Artists such as Jacob Lawrence and writers such as Zora Neal Hurston, Langston Hughes and others inform the work she does.

She originally saw herself as a painter but through fabric she tries to weave her past and the collective past and traditions of her heritage into her work. She tries to imbue her work with the vitality of a past that informs the future. The Sankofa bird, one of the quilts pictured, is the African symbol for just that.