Creating in the Hudson Valley
For some years you rented a studio in Kingston. What was that like?
I had just done a huge piece for the Philadelphia Convention Center, and had been looking for a barn in Pennsylvania or upstate New York for storage. I found space in the tugboat factory in Kingston on the river, which was the most beautiful building. I had 7,000 to 8,000 square feet, and you could throw a stone five feet and it’d go into the river. There were sturgeon, sculls, rowboats and tour boats, and I’d look out in the morning and see herons; in the winter I’d see icebergs. It was a child’s fantasy of the river, and you could walk up the street and get a great cup of coffee.
I was evicted in 2001 when the building was sold. I was in contract to try to buy it for five years, and was going to bring my MFA program to the building [before it was sold to someone else]. We had a biennial sculpture show there with Mark di Suvero and other great artists.
My first big piece after landing in that space was called Round Hole Square Peg. There was a big storm, and half of the trees fell into the river. I collected those for the piece, which for me had very little color: steel that was like the river; it looked zen-ny. I formed plaster stupas and mandalas; it was very river-related. It was shown in a gallery on 57th Street, which is the major river in New York City, and almost had the same relationship to the gallery as the Rondout Creek did to my studio. When I looked out and saw the flow of cars, it made sense.
Did the sewage plant in Kingston, across the street from the Cornell Building, bother you?
Every place I lived for the last 30 years had a sewage plant across the street. I’m totally insensitive to smells.
I’ve heard you often patronized P & T Surplus, located on Abeel Street, not far from your studio.
At P & T Surplus I used to get tons of sinks, things from chemistry labs made of slate, and also a lot of steel and aluminum and shelving materials. [Owner] Tim Smythe is a remarkable fellow who is so helpful to my students.
Where do you live and work now?
I have a beautiful home in Kingston that used to be owned by [the evangelist] Father Divine. My studio is in Tivoli, where I bought five acres to protect my space from development. I’m a fierce gardener wannabe. I try to grow things like crazy, and when they die there’s the advantage that I can use them. I have students come in and help archive or pick weeds in the yard.
Many of your pieces are experiential and relate to specific experiences and places. Which places have influenced you? What about the country of your childhood?
I reference nothing in England. I was thrown out of school there, and I’m not an Anglophile. I reference not so much places where I’ve been, but places I’d imagine I’d like.
I have an ensemble sensibility. I don’t like looking at one object, but at lots of things. When you look at a Japanese or Chinese landscape, you see through a frame to a view of Mount Fuji or something, and I like that long view, rather than the closeup. Every time I go to another country, I go into shock. India has a strange organic way of being totally messy and yet working at the same time. It has a wonderful way of assimilating lots of random events and not making too much of a fuss about it. I like that, instead of holding onto the way things are supposed to be.
My first entry into this culture was Japan, Korea, China and then India, which feels right. I’m drawing on paper from there, and I’m in touch with a couple of people over there. I have ideas about things that probably aren’t true at all, but that doesn’t stop me from looking at things and reading about things to be more open.
I imagine your favorite place to be is in the studio.
I don’t hike, fish, have never been on a horse and I don’t ski. I’m pretty constant. A workaholic sounds like what I am. My dog just died after 14 years; my ex-student just fell dead at age 38; and school for the last month has been intense beyond what I can remember. This winter, I tried to work, but I was just drawing blanks. I’ve been recovering from these last few months, which are the most difficult I can remember. I don’t have children or family, and I don’t know how people who have complicated lives get things done. I have outbuildings that keep me busy. Other lives have different joys.
Do video and other electronic media have any appeal to you?
I don’t get new media in the same way people do who grew up with it. It has this level of cleverness and finesse, which for me makes it hard to keep it raw and interesting.
Tell us about your two upcoming shows this fall in New York.
Pavel Zoubok Gallery is oriented towards collage and Outsider artists, so I’ve been making collages, small pieces with lots of new drawing materials. Loretta Howard, who used to be the director at Andre Emmerich, is in the same building upstairs. The gallery is so white, it makes you want to wear those snow glasses. I was thinking of making it whiter.
It’ll open in October, and because it’s in the middle of the season, I have a short installation time; there’s logistics I’ve got to think about. I got a phone call from both of them asking what I was going to put in the show, and I thought, “Perhaps you don’t know who you’re talking to.”
You’ve been quoted as saying you were an emerging artist for 30 years, before winning the MacArthur Fellowship. How did that grant change your life?
There was a time from 1987 to 1992 when I started making pretty large and bulky wall pieces instead of installations, thinking there might be a market for it. A few sold, but most I still have in my basement. With the MacArthur grant, I managed to build a space on my property here in Tivoli to find and repair those pieces and put them together.
My very best friends, Elizabeth Murray and Al Held, had died, and they had both taken care of their work so that it wasn’t a burden to the people around them. I realized my life was a mess. I had just been busy making things and not protecting what I had made. Every installation – and there were over 100 of them – had been thrown away, though I might keep part of a stick or other detail, and if it was neutral enough, make a table and chair out of it. I thought, “It’s time for me to grow up and value that work.”
The MacArthur freed me. All of a sudden I thought, “They like me,” like I was Sally Field or something. I’ve always been a fighter and belligerent and trying to buck the system. I wondered, “How did I get this support, given I’m a little irascible?” It changed how I thought about myself.
For more information about Judy Pfaff, visit https://www.judypfaffstudio.com.
