For the past thirty years Judy Pfaff’s irreverent, idiosyncratic installations have regularly challenged expectations to produce an art of great originality and strong emotional impact. In Judy Pfaff the artist’s unusual choice of materials, spontaneous approach, and vast creative energy are strongly displayed, inviting readers into a world as much about her commitment to "being and becoming" as it is about the art that results.

In this important monograph emphasizing the distinctive installations for which Pfaff is best known, the full range of her career is explored, from the mid-1970s to the present. Originating in a highly successful exhibition at the Elvehjem Museum, this engaging treatment of Pfaff’s work expands to contain a thorough essay by Irving Sandier, the curator responsible for Pfaff’s first gallery show in New York, as well as a complete exhibition history and an extensive bibliography on the artist and her work.

The present monograph resulted from the exhibition of Judy Pfaff’s sculpture, drawings, and prints, The Art of Judy Pfaff, which the Elvehjem Museum of Art presented from April 28 through August 12, 2001. The exhibition also included the site-specific installation If I Hada Boat, which had been created in the Elvehjem’s Paige Court in August 2000 and remained on view through the closing of her exhibition the following August.

By the time Judy created her installation in Paige Court, her art was already familiar to Madison collectors and museum audiences. In the spring of 1995, the museum had presented an exhibition of the prints produced at Crown Point Press starting in the late 1980s. In February 1996, Tandem Press, an affiliate of the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, invited her to Madison as artist-in-residence. This initial visit to Tandem proved so mutually satis-factory that Judy subsequently returned to Madison numerous times. The Elvehjem Museum of Art was also a direct beneficiary of these highly productive visits. As the official archive for Tandem Press, the museum received an impression of each of the editioned prints into its permanent collection. Over time, this intense exposure to the artist and her work gave rise to a desire to see more of her work and put the Tandem Press prints into a broader context.

INTRODUCTION

by Russell Panczenko

JUDY PFAFF: TRACKING THE COSMOS

by Irving Sandier

PLATE SECTION

Exhibition History

Bibliography

index