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.