JUDY PFAFF

WEBSITE: JUDYPFAFFSTUDIO.COM

INSTAGRAM: JUDY.PFAFF

Biography Woodstock

Often cited as a pioneer of installation-art and contributor to the Pattern and Decoration Movement (P&D), Judy Pfaff has created work that spans disciplines from painting to printmaking and sculpture to installation. Born in London in 1946, Pfaff received a BFA from Washington University Saint Louis (1971) and an MFA from Yale University (1973) where she studied with Al Held. She exhibited work in the Whitney Biennials of 1975, 1981, and 1987, and represented the United States in the 1998 Sao Paulo Bienal. Her pieces reside in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney Museum of Art, Tate Gallery, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Detroit Institute of Arts, among others. She is currently represented by the Miles McEnery and Accola Griefen galleries in New York and has been previously represented by Holly Solomon, Carl Solway and Susanne Hilberry. She is the recipient of many awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center (2014), the MacArthur Foundation Award (2004), and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1983). Pfaff lives and works in Tivoli, New York.

Except From “Upstate Diary: Issue #8” Interview by James Barron

JB - Even though there are a lot of urban elements in your work, it seems to me that you need the landscape and the country.

JP - Well, now I do. But when I lived in New York City I thought my work was quite urban. Then, when I moved to Brooklyn, it got a little suburban. And when I first came upstate I lived in a tugboat factory and I swear the work got almost Zen-like. And I was just watching the river go by. So here, now, in that greenhouse, occasionally I’ll think, ‘Well, it’s time to clear out all those dead leaves.’ And then I got this inventory of these dead leaves that curl in a very particular way. That particular shape reminds me of a philodendron, this thing that has a particular beauty, dead or alive.

JP on Chinatown, NYC. Relative to Artwork of the same name: Maybe because of my upbringing — there was no house, there was no home — most of the time, I dreamt of traveling. In New York, going to Chinatown is always like my vacation. It’s like going to another world. I love its texture. And I don’t know if you notice, but there’s a lot of shit in those places.

Judy

- Beaufort Scale, 2008- Japanese paper, Hosho, joss, newsprint, coffee filters, magazines, origami, fishing floats, wire, shellac, dye, ink, encaustic, acrylic- 95.5 x 49 x 5.75 in.