Exhibitions

JUDITH DONNA FOX: L’CHAIM

Julia Martin Gallery / 444 Humphreys St. August 2 - 30th (Reception: August 2 6:00pm - 9:00pm)

Judith Donna Fox

I am pleased to welcome back Judith Donna Fox. The daughter of first & second generation immigrants, Judith grew up in Brooklyn. She studied fine art at Brooklyn College, the Art Students’ League, the Brooklyn Museum of Art School and the N.Y. Studio School. She exhibited throughout the 70’s at the Brooklyn Museum, The World Trade Center, Atlantic Gallery in Soho… and in ’76 was awarded the New York State CAPS award for sculpture. Fox went on to pursue a career in psychoanalysis that has informed her continued art practice. She relocated to Nashville in 2021 and has participated in a number of group exhibitions during that time. This will be Judith's first solo exhibition in Nashville.

-JM

artist statement

I chose the title, L’Chaim to claim my identity as a Jew, although that has nothing to do with the subjects I depict. At a time when callousness and cruelty are being enacted all around us, I believe that if we each are true to our individual identities, only then can we be true to each other’s individual identities - human or other living being. Many of my drawings are of models from various figure drawing groups I've attended over the last 20 years. While this is often thought of as “academic exercise’ it has never been this for me. I never idealize a model, but instead draw them as they are and show their discomfort, which if it is a long pose inevitably occurs. My goal is to show their individuality in that time and space, and the beauty that reality entails. My sculptures push beyond mark making to record the struggle against gravity through clay, as metaphor for the lifelong struggles that we are not usually conscious of. This exhibition is an invitation into the stages and tangents of this process, and a celebration of life.