Judy Pfaff. Sculptor, Printmaker, Painter And Installation Artist.
From the moment I first saw Ms. Pfaff’s work I was drawn to it. Years ago when I discovered her sculpture installations filling the whole gallery space with gutsy, (mostly) multi-colored shapes (although some are more on the monochromatic side), I have been an admirer of hers.
Judy Pfaff was born in London, England and moved to the United States at the age of thirteen, where after graduating high school in Michigan she went to Wayne State University in Detroit, Southern Illinois University, Washington University in Saint Louis, then onto Yale where she received her Master of Fine Art degree.
Ameringer-Yohe Fine Art website. “Buckets of Rain.” 2006
Judy Pfaff creates paintings, sculpture, prints, and installation art. Of the creation of her work, she says “I’ve always done prints and drawings, always. No one buys those installations, so when you see things that are portable that I’m not attached to, they’re probably two-dimensional. If you get an installation of mine, you inherit [my assistant] Ryan, myself, a crew, the dog, the noise, the dirt. We wreck the house. So if you don’t want that, then you get prints and drawings.” Her installation art has been compared to that of “a collagist in space.” Roberta Smith, critic for The New York Times, said that Pfaff’s work was “exhilarating” and “elaborately impure.” Benjamin Genocchio, another New York Times critic, said that “she seems somehow to get order and disorder working for her at the same time.” She has also done Scenic design.
Wikipedia.
Judy Pfaff website: “Ziggurat.” Part of an installation done in 1981, Cologne, Germany.
Sweet Briar College Art Gallery: “Yoyogi, State II.” 1984. Woodblock print. 30.5″ x 35″
Ms Pfaff is a difficult artist to pigeonhole; she has a vast vocabulary in all the media in which she works; but at the heart of her work is her exploration of how to make her painting more three dimensional and her sculpture more painterly. From the beginning of her career in the 1970’s, she has worked with a wide and unusual range of materials and has inspired younger artists to venture outside the traditional distinctions made between painting and sculpture. Pfaff moves back and forth easily between two and three dimensional work creating art that is complex, profuse and unique. Her dynamic, exuberant and large-scale (and typically site-specific) installations incorporate local materials and combine painting, sculpture and architecture. These works include carefully crafted elements of her own making with found materials, both man-made and natural, to create protean forms of rich complexity. From the Tandem Press site.
Judy Pfaff’s site: “Supermercado.” 1986 Steel woks, wood, formica. 8′ 4″ x 13′ 8″
While primarily a sculptor, Pfaff’s concepts are expressed in equal power in her paintings, prints, and drawings. Her work continues to evolve, and she has recently begun to explore the incorporation of photographic/digital imagery into her installations and prints. From the Tandem Press site.
Crown Point Press: “Six of One – Maize.” 1987 Woodcut. 44.5″ x 69″
Judy Pfaff’s website, ”Planetary Time.” 1990 Mixed media 4′ 8″ x 13′ x 5′ 2″
Ms. Pfaff working on “Ear to Ear,” 1995 Installation for the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA.
In an interview with Richard Whittaker, as she takes a break from assembling her installation “Ear to Ear” at the Art Center in Pasadena, CA, Ms. Pfaff states:
Up until about five or six years ago, I thought all the work was about exterior things — noticing how the light fall, or a tree grows. And if I went someplace, I’d think, “Oh good, now I can do something about what I see here — in Tokyo.” Then suddenly, I saw it was really an interior landscape. I’ve just come to it. I don’t think it’s a surprise to anybody else, but it was a surprise to me. With the early installations there was a lot of problem solving, and that would get me through the show. There were also ideas coming — probably out of Modernism — about how to make the space work. I wanted to deal with transparency in this one, or temperature in that one, or some other subject. But with the last couple of shows it would get to something interior. Before, the colors were used to do spatial things, but now they’re used to do emotional things. So now there’s a real shift in the way the imagery is put together and how the color is chosen. It’s not about them, or it, it’s really about me and mine, and probably closer to everybody because of that.
(The above paragraph and the rest of this interview first appeared in issue 1 of the publication Works + Conversations. Check it out at the magazine’s website at www.conversations.org )
Judy Pfaff’s website, Gallery view of “Drop in the Bucket.” 1998 Drawings.
Judy Pfaff’s website, “Drawings.” Wiliam Traver Gallery. ”From Surface to Form.” 2003
On Winning the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2004, Ms. Pfaff states:
It’s been the roughest two years, and the best two years, since the MacArthur. Sometimes I think, if I hadn’t gotten it, nothing bad would’ve happened to me. It reminds me of that old TV show, “The Millionaire,” [every episode of which began with a man] who drops a pile of money on someone’s doorstep. Ninety percent of the time that show ended badly. I’ve heard of people who win the lottery—somebody wins $50 million and four years later they’re homeless. For a year I thought, it’s the “MacArthur curse!” But now, two years into it, I think I can change it to “the MacArthur fabulous life blessing.”
Artnet: (Untitled #3) 2006 h: 93″ x w: 47″ Mixed media on paper.
Crown Point Press Site:
