University art education has been pumping out thousands of artists who have been trained in conceptual, theoretical, and formal issues, and they’ve learned to “talk in tongues,” which is making art that nobody but a small coterie of people can understand. If you leave that elitist environment and go into a broader audience, you simply can’t talk in tongues. You have to make images that are more accessible. That’s one of the things my practice has really focused on…

The difference between me and my former student Suzanne Lacy, who is much more an example of social practice, is that I have remained deeply committed to the process of actually making physical, visual images. All of the social practice artists are performance based… I created my own career and had my own vision for art, and it’s a different vision. I love the process of making images… Although my work has definitely had social effects. — Judy Chicago*

 

This is the closing week for the exhibition JUDY CHICAGO—THE NATURAL WORLD in Toronto. The show includes the artist’s Garden Smoke series as well as recent works on porcelain. See link below for details.

 

 

JUDY CHICAGO — THE NATURAL WORLD

Through July 9

Daniel Faria Gallery

188 St. Helens Avenue, Toronto

 

*“Untitled Sketchbook, 1983” (Judy Chicago, interview by Nancy Princenthal), Document 16 (Spring-Summer 2020), 233.

 

 

Judy Chicago, from top: Santa Barbara Museum Atmosphere, 1969, Santa Barbara, California, printed 2018, archival pigment print; El Lobo, 2019–2020, China paint on porcelain; Hindered by the Light (Garden Smoke boxed set), 2020, archival pigment print; Curtailed by a Fence (Garden Smoke boxed set), 2020, archival pigment print; Live and Let Live, 2019–2020, China paint on porcelain; Ghost Trees in the Gulf of Mexico, 1996, mixed media on Magnani paper. Images © Judy Chicago, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.