about

JUDITH YOURMAN'S work ranges from ceramic sculpture to multimedia installation, video and animation. A current Minnesota State Arts Board grantee, she is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including awards from the NEA, McKnight and Jerome Foundations. Her work appears in permanent and private collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art. She taught in the art departments of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges, and creates arts programming for public schools in Minnesota. Yourman received her BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from the University of MN. She currently resides in Saint Paul, MN.

STATEMENT My recent work explores line and volume, dancing on the edge between human and creature. Neither naked nor clothed, ambiguously aged and gendered, it is a loose response to my daughters’ early drawings. Investigating their expressionistic imagery, rich in pathos and humor, has been like studying a new language. In my work, I explore human connections, drawing on sources including anthropology, art history, and contemporary theory and culture. These considerations, have provided me with a rich creative point of departure to make art that is at once serious and playful, reflecting the complexity and humanity of our times

My work is created in a process of iterations, where drawings inform my sculpture, while photos of my sculptures are transformed to drawings and collage. In this process, photos of my sculptures are laser printed and painted with gouache. Others times they are altered to appear as drawings. This process has also inspired my ceramic wall drawings, figurative clay wall forms that are incised and colored with black stain. I draw in clay, as on beautiful textured art papers, nudging the boundaries between them. These transformations keep my work fluid, infusing a sense of experimentation and discovery in my process.