Wide Load II

graphite, conte, photograph, enamelled hardware, h 45" x w 29"

Artist’s Statement: 
Caelum Gallery, Manhattan, “Constructing Constructions”

One can draw an analogy between the fabrication of a mixed media work of art and the erection of a built structure. The analogy may, at first, appear a loose, imperfect one, operating in the realm of metaphor, where poetic discourse meets concrete experience. However, it surely becomes more plausible when the central motif in the work of a mixed media artist is the very machinery that enables the raising of a edifice. This is certainly the case for the body of work comprising “Constructing Constructions”, now on exhibit at Caelum Gallery. We know, of course, that the primary goal guiding the efforts of architects and engineers on a construction site is utility, while aesthetic seduction and compelling expression determine the process of an artist in her studio. Nevertheless, what the accomplished architect, engineer, and mixed media artist clearly share is their skill and precision in the manipulation of materials in the manufacture of a coherent product.

Judith Stone’s bi-level, wall-hung pieces do indeed invite technical study. However, far more critical to their appreciation is full understanding of the link between the rendered and photographic imagery in each piece and the artist’s chief preoccupations, those generated by global travel, coupled with those emerging from inward exploration. For example, the opulent window displays and glittering indoor fountains recorded by the Stone’s camera in the “Tokyo/Upsurge” series refer to the astonishing year she spent in Tokyo in the mid-1980's, a boom period for Japan in general and Tokyo in particular. What most magnetized the artist was the pervasive incorporation of Western norms, in both commerce and fashion, in an urban context that nonetheless remained utterly Asian and alien. In a smaller body of work, in such pieces as “Facts on the Ground I & II”, ancient Hebrew and Roman stone structures in Jerusalem’s Old City point to a more profound concern, one that is closer to the bone: the artist’s ongoing investigation of her Jewishness and her parent’s Zionism.

Binding the disparate content in the greater number of Stone’s images is earth moving equipment itself, a constant in a wealth of variables. Her stylized bead on tractors, cranes, booms, and backhoes bespeaks her long-term fascination with the machinery’s ponderous, deliberate movement when at work on site, and the latent power they suggest when at rest.

Like the architect and the engineer, the mixed media artist occasionally hits snags, intractable problems in assembly and, worse yet, completed pieces that fall short in visual coherence and/or expressivity. Stone confesses to predictable frustration when a work in progress doesn’t work. But overriding the frustration is her commitment to revision. Most commonly, the revision takes the form of elimination, the cutting, tearing, burning away of extraneous elements. The work on exhibit at Caelum reflects that impulsion to steamline, to pare away the inessential, in its forthright severity.