The Life and Times of Tom Judd

Chapter 4

Art School

After graduating from High school I headed to the University of Utah and attended an orientation to the Fine Arts department. There it was explained to me that if I signed up for the Art foundation program making art was pretty much all I would be doing. Well, that sounded great to me!

Driving my Dad to work the next morning in my 1961 VW micro bus, I relayed to him the deal with the foundation program. He advised me not to “put all my eggs in one basket” and to take a lot of different classes the first year. Then if I really wanted to, sign up for the art program the second year. This was, of course, good advice. But the thing my Dad didn’t understand is there was absolutely nothing else I was interested in. And what I hadn’t mentioned was that I had already signed up.

To my Dad's credit, when he found out, he was very supportive and excited for me. My Mom -- who was a closet Democrat living in the Junior League Republican world of my father -- loved the idea of me pursuing a career as an artist. But was always worried about how I was going to make a living. In her mind there was no precedence for this. How does an artist make a living? Would I teach art? Would I become a commercial artist to make money and do ”My Art” in my spare time?

There were no answers and I set out to find some.

Like many men and their fathers at times there was a certain degree of misunderstanding, perhaps even resentment. My mother told me that I was the most like him of all of the children in our family. Maybe he saw in me a chance for a “do-over” in life -- to make better choices this time around and counted on me to get it right. We, of course, never talked about it.

One night after several martinis my father acknowledged me for being an artist and going after my dream. It was a summer night, under the big cottonwood trees out on the patio. My father has been dead for many years but I will never forget that night and I will always treasure that moment out on the patio.

Postcards from America - Issue 21 May, 2010

While the Cat's Away

Kiki went away to art camp in April. She was at the Virginia Center for the creative arts for two weeks. I was left behind as acting single parent with Princess Astrid Sofia. My son Will moved back in to help out and he really was a huge help. He and Astrid are best of buddies. Her initials are tattooed on Will's back. Now that is brotherly love! Astrid is talking up a storm and one of her many talents is remembering peoples names. She will walk down the street in our neighborhood greeting parents, children and pets by their first name. She is a sort of a prodigy social butterfly.

While Kiki was a way I took the opportunity to cut Astrid’s hair. Actually it was Astrid’s idea. Of course this is something one never does unless one is just looking for a fight. But the gal’s hair was looking so straggly I just couldn’t resist. So one day after breakfast I got the scissors out and cut away. I have to say, except for the back, which looked fairly hacked up, it is a damn cute haircut. Kiki eventually has come around to liking it, but she would never admit that to me. I don’t think she wants to encourage that sort taking of liberties.

Florida

I just opened an exhibition of my large paintings in April at Etra Fine Art in the design district of Miami. Gallery owners Stephano Campanini and Alicia Restrepo put me up at their beautiful house in west Miami. The opening was well attended and it’s always a lot of fun meeting people in a new town. Etra Fine Art is a fairly new gallery and part of a very exciting new frontier in high-end design and artistic enterprises in what was formerly an industrial wasteland on the fringes of downtown Miami. It has the energy and edge of early Soho in New York or Venice Beach in California.

Park City

I’m opening an exhibition of new work at Julie Nester gallery in Park City opening on July 30th. I have also been invited to be a resident/mentor in the Kimball Art Center’s 1st Annual Artist in Residency Program: “Relevant 2010” which begins on August 1st.

The Hermit Project - Resurrected

After installing a version of “The Hermit Project” in my recent exhibition “Evidence of a Collected Past” at The Globe Dye Works, the kind folks at The Globe have offered to give me a permanent space to install the Hermit cabin. The installation will take place in the next six months.

The Life and Times…

For those of you who couldn’t get enough of my short autobiographical blurbs I used in the Globe show emails, I have posted them on my blog and will continue to write about my life via blog entries, using the same format.

Art and Wine Auction

The 2nd annual “Tom Judd Art and Wine Auction Benefiting Saint Malachy School” was held on April 22nd, at the Saint Patrick’s Church Hall in Philadelphia. It was a lovely evening and we raised over $20,000 for the school. Special thanks to Mary Courtney, Mary Schmeltzer, Ken Berman and all the artists who contributed work. I also want to acknowledge everyone at Saint Malachy who contributed to this successful event.

The Life and Times of Tom Judd

Chapter 1

Battle Ships and Guns

My favorite picture of my father is of him standing in an open field of sage brush and rocks with a giant mountain behind him. He was standing where our house would be built on the foot hills of the Wasatch mountain range in Salt Lake City Utah. I grew up in that pink cinder block house that my parents built in 1956. Everything was great until we moved to Winnetka Illinois, a suburb of Chicago where my father got a job for one year organizing the 1960 republican convention that an nominated Richard Nixon. I was 7 years old and enrolled in Hubert Woods’s elementary school. It was immediately clear that I was not going to cut it at Hubert Woods. I was supposed to transfer to the 3rd grade but I was failing to understand anything they put in front of me. What was most terrifying was the worried looks on all of the adult faces. They put me in a second grade class and sent me to a remedial reading course after school in someone’s dark living room with adults who couldn’t read. My conclusion was, “I’m screwed and I’m going to be an artist”. I was really good at drawing pictures, so that is what I did. I would spend hours drawing battle ships with thousands of guns with a pencil on cream colored construction paper. The other kids loved them. So at 7 years of age, I decided this was all I ever wanted to do.

Chapter 2

Prequel

My Mom met my Dad in Panama during World War II. She was one of the first Pan Am stewardesses; she flew between Miami and Panama City where my Dad was a captain in the Army Air corp. They got married right after the war and moved to a dusty little town in southern Utah called Mt. Pleasant.


My father, Tom Judd, Sr., bought the Mount Pleasant Pyramid, the town weekly newspaper 
and wrote a column for it called Tom Foolery. This was a dream come true for my father but 
my mother would later refer to Mt. Pleasant
As “misery spelled backwards.” The family lived in a tiny apartment over the local drug store. After a couple of years of Mt. Pleasant the family moved back east to Lawrenceville, NJ where Dad got a “real job” with an Advertising agency. Soon thereafter I was born as the middle child of four siblings.

We later moved back to Salt Lake City and my Dad found work for a big Insurance company. He did a great job of supporting his family and never complained about not being able to follow his passion to write. But I always had the sense he was a guy walking around with unfulfilled dreams.

It is said that sons compare themselves to their fathers -- often competitively. And there are times, low moments, when my choosing the artist's life might seem like "Tom Foolery". 
But then there are days when I get to the studio early in the morning and realize I have the whole day to make paintings and be an artist. 
My Dad’s inspiration and support over the years has helped me now see that the opportunities in our lives are often rooted in those who come before us. And maybe, somehow, this dream of mine is lived... for the both of us.

Chapter 3


Yes, Sometimes There Are Birds 
In My Paintings

One year I asked for a pellet gun for Christmas. In Utah everyone has a gun. The schools actually close for deer hunting season.


My family was not the gun or hunting type. My father didn’t even fish. So my parents were a little mystified that I wanted a gun of any sort.

Christmas came on a beautiful white Christmas morning. The mountains were brilliant with snow and the clouds hung low hiding the peaks. So before breakfast I dashed out the door into the silent winter morning and headed into the grove of cottonwood trees next to our house. I immediately spotted a Robin perched on a branch just twenty feet away. I pointed my new rifle and pulled the trigger. The bird fell to the ground. It lay still, blood spattered on the white snow. I stared down in horror, quickly covering the bird with snow and running back to the house.


I joined the family at the breakfast table. There was a lot of laughing and good cheer in the air and I didn’t mention to anyone about the bird. The new pellet gun was retired, relegated to a corner of our basement to collect dust and years later sold at a garage sale.