biography

Judy Byron believes her undergraduate training in Method Acting, combined with her formal art training and rich experiences as a community organizer, make her the artist she is today: someone who believes that art is part of life and that life is part of art.

Over years, she worked in the context of community and commissioned public art, presenting life-size figures through her woodcut rubbings. Now, she creates life-size 3-D drawings that evoke childhood reverie with paper dolls and continue her exploration of identity. Believing in the dynamism of one's inner and outer life at any given moment in time, through drawing she connects kinesthetically with each woman's body and clothing to express what has been brought to that moment.

Byron introduces each series in her Mt. Pleasant row house as an Artist House Installation animated with diverse events. Within this setting, she presents the softly cast clothing drawings upon lighted silhouettes, augmented by audio voices, offering her figures as conveyors of our shared humanity.

Her works on paper have been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts. Permanent installations include the Tate Turner Kuralt Building at UNC Chapel Hill. Solo exhibitions include Artists + Communities curated by Angela Adams at the National Museum of Women in the Arts with participation in group exhibitions such as Picturing Politics curated by Rex Weil, Art Against AIDS curated by Ann Philbin, and as one of the "Sweet Sixteen" selected by Mira Rubell. Her work is part of the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth Sackler Center Feminist Artist Base. Collections include the Corcoran Museum, the NMWA, the Library of Congress and Absolut Vodka. "100 DC Artists" (Spring 2011) edited by Lenny Campello includes her work.

She founded CAMP, an Artist Mentorship Program for the Corcoran Museum of Art. It was honored as a national model by the NEA and the President's Commission on Arts and Humanities. Her next installation is "Perfect Girls" followed by "Continental Drift" which will complete the series.