About Ruta
I was raised by my beloved non-English speaking Polish grandmother. Though my name is Ruth, it is ‘Ruta’ in Polish. Even now, my friends sometimes call me Ruta, a name that conveys my grandmother’s warmth and love.
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When she died in my early childhood, my world turned to chaos, not just emotional but physical chaos through my caretaker adults. Consequently, I began to clean up, organize, and bring order and beauty to my physical surroundings. I thought if the outside was fixed, the inside would be too. I was not far from wrong. Our environment reflects our inner being and our souls affect our physical surroundings. As a child, I had very little control over chaos but as I grew up, I started to put my ideas into practice to put calm back into my life.
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After having taught in well cared for private schools, I eventually moved to the inner city public school system. There, I was introduced to physical chaos all over again. Knowing that the students had to be affected by their environment, I went to work decorating my classroom with the materials at hand and successfully instructed other teachers how to do the same. This time I was prepared for chaos. I already had a Master’s in Special Education (learning disabilities and emotional handicaps), all the courses in interior design at the NY Fashion Institute of Technology and many additional courses in Western Philosophy and the mathematics of art and beauty.
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Many people use Feng Shui to bring chi to their environments. Still, I believe we should look to our Western traditions to find answers to what ails our surroundings. We go to the East because we have no working system in the West. My work is to go to our culture and glean the best of its traditions to resolve the stumbling blocks to bringing harmonious design to chaos. It was, after all, the perception of chaos that brought the early Greeks to create the beginnings of Western philosophy. Such concepts led eventually to the scientific method. The best and the worst of designs fall within that tradition.
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In essence, I have developed a Western form of Feng Shui, something that challenges our thinking about matter and spirit, private and public space, the health of our communities and the sacred spot we call home. In honor of my grandmother, welcome to rutas-rules. com.
Ruth Dec-Friedman