Fasten by Judy Bird Fine Art Collage

Judy Bird was born in San Jose, California. Bird graduated with her BA in liberal arts with a concentration in studio arts, in 1998. Her desire to enhance her skill set, and further develop concept inspired her to apply to graduate student at the Academy of art University in San Francisco, she was accepted as a non-figurative painting major in 2005 . Bird is an acquired brain injury survivor who struggles to manage her various amnesias. A critical illness in 2009 nearly took her life, and she has had to “re” learn much of what she learned. So it is not surprising to find some 13,000 words that start with “re” handwritten” in her work. She has to record each step she makes in the studio on wall boards in order to print an edition of prints. The struggles, are suggested when the work is formally recorded, each step of the way in editions, in contrast to the freedom of the impulsive, intuitive and spontaneous approach she enjoys in her hybrid one of a kind forms. In the recent past, she contrast the delicate cellular and neural images along with her organic autobiographic marks and words. This is then contrasted against a more universal, graphic and iconic visual language. She creates forms, of which some are two dimensional and others become hybrids, integrating two-dimensional and nontraditional prints into three-dimensional forms that interact in time and space with the viewer. One such form is her recent scroll that also includes her worksheets. Her rehabilitation worksheets are an important element of her art; the hand written marks over the grid like structures helped her to reclaim her personal and professional life. Bird continues towards an interdisciplinary approach to the arts and continues to add new technical skills and substrates to integrate and challenge the concept within the framework of nontraditional printmaking and paintings. Her work is constantly in flux, memory impairments plague fluid runs of prolific work; however strong work is always her objective.