Judy Pfaff: Visiting Artist

Renowned sculptor Judy Pfaff will present a lecture at The University of Montana at 6:10 p.m. Monday, April 11, in Social Science Building Room 356.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO HER WEBSITE.

The event, sponsored by the UM School of Art and the Jim and Jane Dew Visiting Artist Program, is free and open to the public.

With a stellar career spanning more than 30 years, Pfaff is widely regarded as one of the preeminent installation artists of our time. She is known for her lyrical and energetic manipulations of surprising materials, taking over gallery and alternative spaces for months at a time.

Pfaff is a professor of art and co-chair of the Department of Art at Bard College, Annendale on Hudson, New York. She was born in England and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale in 1973.

She has received numerous awards for her sculpture, installation, prints and drawings, including a United States Artists Fellowship, a Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship and two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships.

Pfaff said she believes in being a positive and encouraging teacher.

“My first time teaching at Queens College, I thought, ‘I don’t want one or two (good students),’” she said. “I want this whole thing to be an organism that grows together. I’m going to get better, and they’re going to get better.”

Nancy Princenthal of “Art in America” said: “Pfaff’s work has always been exuberant, lush and hospitable to the language of poetry and music. But it is based on a very no-nonsense approach to making art. Visual effects don’t interest her much; causes are more her style.

Like any good student of Post-Minimalism, Pfaff is interested in what happens if things are poured, gouged, pulled, punctured, striated; she favors first judgments and immediate results.”