reviews, features & interviews
Judith Taylor died
February 3, 2010 · 4 Comments
The quick death of artist Judith Taylor from a sudden illness struck her friends in the art community for its untimeliness. Taylor had missed her yoga class, and they hadn’t known why. The day of the Philagrafika press and VIP opening, they were reeling and could talk of little else. Taylor, a photographer, was professor and program coordinator of photography in Arcadia University’s art department.
Here’s what artist Nancy Lewis had to say:
i met judy through her work. when i worked at temple gallery her diary pages were in an exhibit, “ophelia rising.” i fell in love with these images…so rich in print quality and light (she was a master) and so full of tenderness and feeling. probably because i am a woman who kept a diary as girl made me connect to them more so, but even the way they were composed was masterful and sensitive beyond the actual subject. i also liked that they were photos of handwriting–young girls’ cursive handwriting. they were rich with memory but also graphic and awkward, careful and sad. years later i put them in “selections 6″ at moore. we had planned to do a trade (so i could get one! i don’t know if there was actually anything she wanted from me), which unfortunately for me never happened. i gave her a lot of freedom for the selections 6 show and she was able to also do a large installation of something she had not been able to show in its entirety before (studio window, from mitchell street). it was clearly a thrill for her and i enjoyed watching her have so much fun with her work and explain her process to those in the gallery space. when i did a studio visit, prior to the selections show, we had lunch, we looked at her collection of work by others (she had some great stuff, but i can’t remember names right now), we went out in her backyard and talked about her garden and plants, and i think we barely talked about her work. we just visited. but it was so comfortable and welcoming to be in her environs. it was a wonderful little nest. she gave me seed pods from some of her flowers….cleome i believe.
i am so sorry she is gone.
Judith Taylor, January 6 (diary page of a twelve year old girl), polaroid negative contact printed on centennial printing-out paper, 4 x 5 inches, 1999-2007
The funeral service will be Feb. 6, 11 a.m., Paoli Presbyterian Church, 225 South Valley Road, Paoli
Here’s the announcement on Arcadia’s website.
Here are some links about her work at:
Tags: judith taylor, nancy lewis
Readers Comments (4)
I am shocked and saddened by this news, my sincere condolences to her family, students, and friends.
Judy was one of the most positive artists I’ve had the chance to know. It was always a pleasure to run into her at Arcadia or anywhere else. Her ever ready enthusiasm was tempered by a stoic sense of reality that made her sunny demeanor all the more persuasive for me. Judy’s solution-oriented approach to things made a difference by the clear thinking you could hear in the tone of her voice. I witnessed this time and again, whether it was negotiating some administrative situation at a faculty meeting, advising a student, or making plans to visit sites in England and France associated with the origins of photography, a trip I know she was looking forward to making in the year ahead. In her company, things like this seemed possible, and the world less overwhelming. During one of the last conversations we had, she convinced me of the merits of bifocals and how they made more sense to her than searching for those points of focus that progressive lenses required.
I believe that such pragmatic instincts contributed to the poetry of Judy’s work, which, for me, has an honesty and immediacy that came from the pure and elemental way she reinvented photography for herself. Her prints give the viewer intimate access to her subjects, which I feel always included a reverence for her medium and the confounding transformations it allows. In 2003, midway through an exhibition at Arcadia that featured an aviary with five live starlings, one of the young birds grew ill and eventually perished. Judy asked, not without hesitation, if she could make a photogram of the fledgling. The result stunned me. This still image, a record of the shadow of the bird cast on the sheet by the sun, appeared to capture the bird in flight. In the print, the starling is alive for all of us again.
Hi, Richard, thank you so much for sharing that thoughtful remembrance.