John Ruskey – Student Workshops

John Ruskey pictured with daughter Emma Crisler-Ruskey (Class of 2025 Dance student at MSA).

• Mississippi River & Gulf Coast Exhibition by John Ruskey (March 17-April 3, 2025)
• John Ruskey Art Exhibition Closing Reception (April 3, 2025 at 5:30pm)
• John will share his expertise in the art field with student workshops on April 3, 2025

John Ruskey is a worker bee in the colony of his Queen, the Mississippi River.  He builds voyageur style canoes for use on the wild waters of the Lower Mississippi River, and is one of the most experienced builders of dugout canoes in the country. In 1998/99 John apprenticed to master canoe builder Ralph Frese in the construction of his first cypress strip voyageur canoe, The Ladybug 27’ cypress strip voyageur canoe.  In 2007 Chinook elder & master canoe builder George Lagergren (94y/o) asked John to renovate 2 of his traditional Chinook dugouts which are now ceremonially housed in tribal headquarters, Wilapa Bay Washington.  In the past 20 years he has built dozens of big canoes, both dugouts and strippers, each a unique and functional work of art that now spend their lives working the Mississippi River.

John is a musician, painter and writer, and lives in Clarksdale and Gulfport, Mississippi, with his family.  His parents moved to Clarksdale 20 years ago, and his daughter Emma-Lou is studying dance at the Mississippi School of Arts.  John was the first curator of the Delta Blues Museum (1992-98) and is co-founder of the Delta Blues Education Fund. In 1998 he founded the Mighty Quapaws Apprenticeship Program for the youth of the Mississippi Delta, most of whom come from severely distressed neighborhoods.  In 2011 he founded the Lower Mississippi River Foundation for access, education, and the betterment of public outdoor recreation on the Middle & Lower Mississippi Rivers.  He is owner and founder of the Quapaw Canoe Company, which is celebrating its 27th anniversary in 2025, and provides guiding & outfitting to the raw wild power & beauty of the Mississippi River, it’s range extends from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico.  He is on the steering committee of the Mississippi River Network, which oversees the 1Mississippi River Citizen Program.

John is the author of the Wild Miles (www.wildmiles.org) and the Rivergator: Paddler’s Guide to the Lower Mississippi River (www.rivergator.org). His passion for nature finds expression in music, painting, writing and canoe building.  The canoe is a unique art form that brings together the principals of form, materials and function into one integral & elegant vessel.  He has floated and written about many of the major rivers of North America, especially the Mississippi.   In the Fall of 2002 he paddled the length of the Big Muddy (Missouri) from Three Forks Montana to St. Louis, Missouri, in a custom built dugout canoe.  His guiding philosophy comes from Thoreau’s statement: “in wildness is the preservation of the world,” words that are becoming increasingly important as global overpopulation and global thirst for fresh water and energy sources are threatening the forests & islands of the Lower Mississippi Valley.

In 2019 John was awarded the Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters: “Through his writing, his music, his watercolors, his environmental efforts, his work with young Mississippians, and his knowledge of Mississippi’s great river.”   In 2022 John was awarded the St. John’s College Award of Merit for distinguished and meritorious service to the United States, to the Mississippi River, and for “outstanding achievement in the arts and exploration.”  John was awarded the SBA 2024 Small Business Person of the Year Award for the State of Mississippi.  John was one of 4 artists chosen for a prestigious residency for the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee, site location Wilson, Arkansas, 2023-2024.