Judith Blankman

I create spatial metaphors for human experience in installation works comprised of architecturally inspired structures.

Interested in the psychology of space and a humanistic approach to art, I work with an instinctive approach, fired by impulse and intuition, to create a sense of relatedness both physical and psychological to the immediate surroundings.

Social context plays a strong role in my work, making the physical experience of a place more relevant by attaching human lives. I quote known writers and everyday people, such as firefighters, whose lives fold into a given project. Large text scribed on walls or stories written in hand-held journals physically engage the visitor. With text I try to stimulate imagination and tug at emotion, adding images and situations with the flow of language.

My installation performance projects involve moving structures, audience participation, and composed and random sound. Motion and sound animate the installation’s physicality, adding a dimension that communicates across cultural, language, age and gender boundaries. Many projects invite audience participation in a variety of ways – playing a sound sculpture/instrument, reading journals, or mounting steps to another part of the work.

Social and political issues such as hunger, weather or Jewish history are themes that I have worked with alongside site-based concerns. Food from an installation is donated to a food bank; journals are read with Holocaust anecdotes; a sail wheel spins while expressing metaphors about the human condition.

Linking the physical with the conceptual, my work focuses on the essence of a place or an idea. I use the vocabulary of space, the language of architectural structures, the symbolism of materials, the poignancy of text, and the universality of sound and motion to recombine the ordinary into new relationships and expanded metaphors.