Judy Hoffman
May 26 – July 7, 2017
Greenwich House Pottery is pleased to announce Judy Hoffman as our current Fellow. Judy is a New York based artist who has in the last several years turned to clay as a sculpture practice. Her works have a darker sinister overtone yet they evoke both whimsy and humor.
“In the studio, I usually have six or more pieces going at once. I jump from one to another so that nothing becomes precious. Ideas expand as I travel back and forth. If things don’t work out for one or more pieces—I break them apart often joining different parts together to build something new.
I aim to build sculptures that have a sense of immediacy, rawness, surprise and sometimes humor. I often work very fast as a strategy for bypassing my “over thinking brain” which stifles and wants to play things “safe”. I choose this form of risk taking, as demanding as it is, because it is also exhilarating and liberating. Ideas I could never have planned emerge in this way.”
Judy Hoffman builds complex visceral sculptures using clay, handmade paper and urban debris while exploring the themes of birth, decay, waste and regeneration. Her site specific installation venues in New York City include Wave Hill, Ceres Gallery, Nutureart, Proteus Gowanus, Kentler International Drawing Center; Rutgers and Jersey City Universities, New Jersey; Mary Grove College, Detroit; and the Bienalle Bonn/Frauen Museum and Kunstler Forum in Bonn, Germany. Hoffman’s artist books are in public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University Art Gallery.
A winner of the 2016 New York Studio School Art Critical Award and a recipient of an anniversary artist grant from Women’s Studio Workshop, Ms. Hoffman has been featured in the journal Hand Papermaking. Living and working in Brooklyn, New York, her art has been recognized by critics from the New York Times, the Village Voice, Hyperallergic and Sculpture Magazine.