5 minute read
JUDY WAPP: VISUALCHEMY
Dr. Know, paper collage, 1985.
by Bessie Wapp
Ever heard of a Rorschach test? That psychological tool that has you look at an inkblot and say what you see in it? My mom’s collages are a bit like that. They’re not as abstract as a Rorschach, but they’re often quite surreal and everyone sees something different.
In recent weeks I’ve had the opportunity to view almost all of my 84-year-old mother’s body of artwork in preparation for her retrospective exhibit at Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery (NMAG). We excavated over 100 framed works from storage, and many more unframed ones. Prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, photographs and, of course, the collages she’s best known for. What an experience! I’d not seen many pieces in decades. It was like being reunited with a huge gang of weird, old friends I hadn’t necessarily understood but over the years, through proximity, had grown to love.
The Hippo sculpture pictured is a very early undated work made of terrazzo, a friendly fixture in my childhood home. It may have been created during Judy’s art studies at Madison, Wisconsin, or when she returned to her hometown Minneapolis to complete a B.A., or perhaps later in New York City where she studied at the Art Students League and met my birth father, another very gifted visual artist.
The untitled tissue paper collage pictured is dated 1962 and may have been created while she was in Europe on a MacDowell Fellowship. This travel opportunity had a profound effect on her professional practice, and she spoke of it with great appreciation. Most impactful was her time with a community of artists on the then sleepy island of Ibiza.
Because the fellowship played such a pivotal role in Judy’s artistic development, the family has decided to create a bursary to support local artists to expand their horizons. To finance the bursary, a number of her artworks will be made available for purchase in future. To receive information on the sale of artworks or to donate to the bursary please contact wappaward24@gmail.com.
My mother has called the Kootenays home since 1971. When she arrived in B.C. with me, my brother and my stepfather, she took up black and white photography and produced many beautiful images of the back-to-the-land life of my childhood, but it was when she started combining her photos with found imagery that she fell in love with a practice that would hold her imagination for many years to come.
With a small pair of very sharp scissors in hand she’d spend hours carefully freeing images from their original contexts, often sophisticated, seductive advertising. Old issues of Life magazine were especially prized for their large format and diverse subject matter.
As she cut out images, she kept a mental inventory of those already gathered in stacks of cardboard beer trays, and waited for the exciting spark of resonance that triggered a search through the image bank for a specific image perhaps not seen in weeks or months. Once found, the playful composition process began: juxtaposing, rearranging, trying others, standing back, squinting, getting a cup of tea. Weighing the balance of colour, shape, line and content.
Of her work Judy says, “I use images from the mass media to give a second look at what surrounds us every day.” She never shied away from critiquing social, cultural, political and economic norms, balancing weighty subjects with a healthy dose of humour.
Pictured is an early black and white collage titled Dr. Know (1985), a good example of her appetite for the surreal and eye for texture. Handed Down (1988) shows the move to using colour in her collage work, and the almost magical power of juxtaposition.
Some of her works incorporate family photos, recalling important life events, stories and themes. Growth Company (on the cover, date unknown) shows little Judy with a favourite uncle and images from The Wizard of Oz. That beloved film was released in 1939, the year Judy was born. Thanks to its charming star Judy Garland, my mother and many other babies born that year were named Judy.
Other pieces reflect a deep love and wide-ranging taste in music. With Lucy Methuen, Judy co-hosted Kootenay Co-op Radio’s “Straight No Chaser” jazz radio program for many years, and the colourful Fame Flower (1995) pictured reflects her musical passion. It also speaks to an intimate teenage encounter with the King of Rock and Roll. (To hear her tell this hilarious and epic story look for the video monitor in the NMAG exhibit.)
You may be able to see that the background of Fame Flower is a gameboard. This piece is an example of her series in which found gameboards’ colourful geometric patterns serve as the compositional starting point.
While maintaining a steady output of visual artwork, Judy was also part of a writing group for years. Her soap opera, Another Valley, produced in Nelson with an impressive cast and crew of local talent, can be found on YouTube and her poem “Ibiza” appears in Bread and Bones, an anthology of prose and verse (Chthonic Press).
If you’re a long-time resident of the Kootenays you might recall a curious outdoor art project involving neck ties on telephone poles south of Toad Rock. Many myths circulated as to the origin story of this enigmatic work, but you can get the real story at the exhibition from a CBC program called On the Road that will screen on a monitor.
To best experience the exhibition, everyone is invited to wear a favourite ugly tie. Who knows what you’ll see in my mother’s strange and beloved work!
Judy Wapp: “visuALchemy,” March 23 to June 22, Nelson Museum, Archives & Gallery, 502 Vernon St., nelsonmuseum.ca.
