Story from New Smyrma Beach by Judy Pfaff, watercolor, oil stick, lace and doilies, 45 x 20, 2004.

I'll admit that I have quite a few art idols. But I reserve my teen-girl Beatles shriek for a select handful, and Judy Pfaff is one of them. Her recent show at Ameringer McEnery Yohe, in New York, was titled “Judy Pfaff, Five Decades,” which says volumes about her creative staying power, versatility, and committed point of view. But what most lures me in about her work is how honest it is about what it is. There is no pretense surrounding what materials Pfaff’s artwork is made of. Instead of hiding that a sculpture is created with steel wool and glass, or that a drawing is made from torn scraps of paper, Pfaff makes those objects artistic and totemic in their own right, celebrating their materiality. Just as Michelangelo seemed to honor the claw and chisel marks of his sculptures and Sorolla rejoiced in the buttery passages in his oil paintings, Pfaff pursues her love of materiality in her own artistic language.

	Hangzhou by Judy Pfaff, 2006, Crown Kozo paper, encaustic, and ink, 57 1/2 x 47 1/2.

Throughout her career, Pfaff’s installations, drawings, and sculptures have been lush, inviting, and unrestrained. She started out during the years of postminimalism in the 1970s, and her work went against the dominant art of the time, which was often stark and sometimes anemic. She went another way, maximizing the variety of color, shape, and physical scale of her works, and using all kinds of objects and materials—metal, fiberglass, string, lace, and paper flowers, among many others.

What Pfaff brings to all of the materials she employs is her ability to prune and cultivate works so that they hold true to her vision, not the other way around. The materials and objects Pfaff uses do not define her work—she does. Using her critical eye, she edits and revises until her vision holds true. This can be quite a challenge when working with materials that seem so concretely defined. How do you make a steel armature seem as organic as an ivy vine, or a stained paper coffee filter as pretty as a rose? Pfaff is able to. She sees the organic possibilities in objects and creates unpredictable pairings that show how materials can converse with one another, what they can achieve alone, and how they resonate as part of a whole.

Fiberarts magazine celebrates artists who are incredibly skillful, conceptual, and creative in response to their chosen materials. From sculptures made of cloth to reusing objects and materials, Fiberarts gives readers the opportunity to think beyond conventions and become more conversant about different forms of art. It’s this kind of outside-the-box acuity that Judy Pfaff brings to her work and that has enabled her to stay relevant for five decades and counting.

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