Komen Ribbon Completed

Front of Friends

Back of Friends

Here are the finished Ribbons without the base. The ribbon to be on display at the local Kohl's Department Store in Oak Creek in September and October, accept for a time where this sculpture and others will be along the route of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, September 25th. At the end of October there will be a national auction of the 17 sculptures, including my , Judith Reidy's 'Friends'.

I hope that my sculpture, Friends, will end up in a hospital or cancer care center to serve as an inspiration and encouragement to cancer patients and their families.

Judith's Progress with the Komen Cancer Ribbon Project

Back of "Friends"

Front of "Friends"

I have been working on the Kohl's Komen Cancer Ribbon project.. It is down the wire as the sculptures have been delivered late. I am still painting the upper half which suggests the trans-formative aspect of love and hope in healing for the cancer patient. The woman is flying....soaring....bodily psychologically, emotionally if not spiritually.

I hope to finish the piece in the next two days.

Appeal to Find our Lost Cat - Oliver

Help up find
Lost Cat, Oliver,
That we love

Indoor Cats can get very scared when they are lost outside, CATATONIC scared.
They try to hide in bushes or in some secluded site. They are often so afraid that they won’t come near even their owners. They can scratch or bite out of fear. Oliver, our cat, normally is very loving and gently persistent, but has a skittish nature in strange new environments...like being outside or with strangers. Normally he hides when strangers visit. He has been friendly with a few.
If you see him,
please call us at 414-529-1624
We live at
5715 South 115th Street
Hales Corners, WI

Painting 26/40 of 40 Consecutive Painting a Day Challenge - Smiling Girl

Smiling Girl
8" x 6"
Watercolor on Paper
$75

I had a great time going through our old family photos when I was preparing the life display poster for my son's high school graduation. Here he is held by his sister in a garden at the Milwaukee domes.

Painting 22 of the 40 Consecutive Painting a Day Challenge - Road Uphill at Malin Head 2

Road Uphill at Malin Head 2
16" x 20"
Pastel on Museum Board
$450

I have done several studies for this piece, some in painting a day. Today I complete the big one.

Painting 21/40 of the 40 Consecutive Day Painting a Day Challenge - Some Years Later

Some Years Later

6" x 7.5"
Watercolor on Paper
$50 print
Original not for Sale

Back several years ago, I took an advanced drawing and anatomy class with Stephan Samerjan (now retired) at UW- Milwaukee. I was inspired by the volume of work he demanded of us, the freedom he gave us to explore and the conversations and class critiques in a fresh way.

I had begun doing a series of line drawings of my mother catching her various moods with a few strokes. It was like writing poetry sketches, fluid yet sharp and clear catching a life of their own. I have talked about expanding that figurative series with color. But because I have always done landscape painting and even Plein Air landscape painting once the magic of the classes influence passed, I fell back into my old habits of doing landscape imagery. Yet the desire to return and expand the exploration of the figure remained with me. Now the last week's busyness forced me to do what I always wanted to do all along. Now I am making expressions with the figure.

This one is of my son now.

Legacy of Life Endured in the Light of Lightweight PR

November 17, 2008

I have not made many thoughtful entries in this particular blog as well as my other blogs recenty, partly because life has taken hold of me and driven me to pursue other avenues of communication.

I am trying to be practical and pursue marketing my artwork and my arts administration opportunities, while I paint on deadlines for exhibition's where I intend to sell my work. I arrange exhibitions for other artists and serve as a website facilitator for a gallery while at the same time I am starting an entirely new business this fall which is in itself an exciting adventure. In addition, I have a son who as a senior in high school needs my chauffeuring to his events like football practice, games until he positions himself to acquire his driver's license.etc.

Part of me is very glad I am dizzyingly busy. So busy, I cannot feel the separation of growing children as acutely. My life had been my children, my family. Discussion and activism in geopolitical issues or developing a body of artwork and even building my new company hold a measure of importance in my life. They, I understand have their particular unique fascination, but I recognize that they do not nor cannot occupy the same place in my heart and dreams as do the people in my family, my kin. Even as I have tried to fill my life with these other things, my longing for my family being a community one in spirit and heart has never diminished. The pain of my family’s growing diaspora gnaws at my soul, draining the life from me. The more I do to bring things together the more acutely aware I am of my family member’s desire to be removed from one another, their home and their roots, their parents. Perhaps this is just an inevitable but passing transition into adulthood for them. But I wonder if it is in fact what I have come to see it as that fruit of the fickle reward of wealth, education and upward mobility, the dream of the American way. Little did we know how much we cast aside when we set our children on the American path of success when we should have inculcated love and tenderness toward one another rather than ambition and adventure.

How does this relate to my art? My technical art skill has improved greatly over the years.. My art imagery has not drawn its ideas from my family as much as from the dream of community lived in the light of truth and love.

I am afraid to place my mind’s eye on the pain of separation for hours on end while I focus on meticulously painting of a “telling story of separation and fracture.” Besides who wants to buy a painting of a “telling a story of separation and fracture?”

Besides for mental survival, I favor keeping my heart and mind on “hope” of renewal and restoration. Neverthless, I prefer living in the truth of the moment rather than making life's reality with mere good PR of putting on a happy face.

Lately I think I may have a new opportunity to “tell the truth in a life story full of pathos amidst hope,” now that my mother, who is in her declining mid eighty’s, has come to stay with me for an extended visit. I see I can compassionately tell a story of separation and fracture.” Somehow, this story, which is so real before me in its human frailty, is striking with hope and beauty because I can be a part of her life at this time. I can laugh and cry and with her and she with me.

I will, in the next months, begin drawing and painting her and her aging friends and surviving brother, etching lines in a legacy of friendship and endurance that I have been privileged to experience through the life of my mother, whom my children have called “Grandma.”

Judith