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Manneken Press
Inner Vision: Judy Ledgerwood's Monotypes
Inner Vision: Judy Ledgerwood's Monotypes
In 2020 Judy Ledgerwood produced a significant body of unique works with Manneken Press. The plan for Ledgerwood to spend a week in residency at the press was upended by the imperative for social isolation during the early days of the COVID Pandemic. Rather than shelving the project, they decided to experiment with working on the prints remotely. Ledgerwood used watercolor paints on sanded acrylic plates in her own studio. When they were dry she shipped the plates to Manneken Press to be printed. This back-and-forth exchange of plates and prints continued over a period of months and resulted in more than thirty monotypes.
Using watercolor, the aqueous media flowed evenly on the sanded surface, allowing the colors to pool, run together, settle and dry in unique patterns and textures, emphasizing its physical materiality as a substance and producing results distinctly different from working with watercolor in an unmediated, direct manner on paper. Ledgerwood’s signature quatrefoil shapes, loose, diagonal grids, floral and yonic symbols, references to quilts and the “feminine arts” and intense, penetrating colors are found throughout the monotype series.
Image Credit:
Sarah Smelser
Jonathan Higgins
Jack Higgins
Jonathan Higgins
Jonathan Higgins
Judy Ledgerwood is a contemporary artist working in Sawyer, Michigan and Chicago. Over a career spanning four decades, she has challenged the male-dominated legacy of minimalist abstraction by engaging its formal language through a feminist lens. Drawing from both fine art and popular culture, Ledgerwood uses the visual vocabulary of concrete abstraction to create vivid, dynamic compositions that disrupt assumptions of neutrality in painting. Her work centers visual pleasure and engagement, often through the use of unapologetically feminine colors and forms. Using repetitive circular shapes and her signature quatrefoil pattern, Ledgerwood bends and relaxes the traditional grid by incorporating influences from the Pattern & Decoration movement, quilting, and textiles, merging formalist and feminist concerns in works that are both sensual and subversive.
Ledgerwood’s work has been exhibited widely, including in solo exhibitions at the Smart Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Renaissance Society in Chicago; Häusler Contemporary in Zurich, Munich, and Lustenau, Austria; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston; and Tracy Williams LTD, NYC. She has completed several prominent commissions, including paintings for the American Embassies in San Salvador, El Salvador and Vientiane, Laos; a large stained glass installation for the Bir Hakeim Paris Metro RATP Station, Paris, France; and site specific installations for the Art Institute of Chicago, Graham Foundation, Chicago and Bloomberg in NYC. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana; the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington; and Museum of Art and Design, NYC. She has received awards from the Driehaus Foundation, Artadia, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Illinois Art Council. Ledgerwood is represented in numerous public collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL; Chicago Public Library; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Milwaukee Museum of Art; Oak Park Public Library, IL; and the Swiss Bank Collection, NY.
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